Following its most successful year ever, Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival – the Highlands’ all ages festival of music and performing arts - won the Grassroots Festival Award at the Virtual Festivals UK Festivals Awards 2008 on Thursday night (30th October 2008).

The five-year-old festival was nominated for a record six awards this year – the most for any Scottish festival – and triumphed in the Grassroots category. The result was announced at a ceremony in London’s O2 Centre.
The Grass Roots Award is described as follows: ‘Often the best small festivals spring from an organic labour of love and a long-time dream which has been shared by thousands more. These festivals should be celebrated, not just for the courage and vision shown by their organisers, but also because they never forget where they've come from, supporting their local communities and new music along the way whilst retaining an independent spirit and resisting the allure of commercial sponsorship.’

Receiving the award at a glittering ceremony in London, festival co-director Joe Gibbs said: “This was the one to win for us. Bella has grown organically from small beginnings into a festival that retains its intimacy and its deep-rooted community links, while offering an incredible range of quality music and performing arts and great value-for-money to an audience of all ages and from near and far. We have retained the loyalty of our audience because we care deeply about what we offer them and because the absence of in-your-face commercialism which leaves people with the impression that they are being fleeced.

“Bella has also triumphed in a very competitive and over-supplied market, in which some of its largest rivals have not hesitated to use their commercial muscle to try to choke off smaller events by placing punitive exclusivity contracts on artists right accross the scale. This practice helps neither artists nor audiences.

“Our tartan heartfelt thanks are due to the loyal audiences and communiity who have supported us, the wonderful team of Highlanders who have worked on the event (many of them since its inception, growing their own skills in the proccess), to the artists, and their agents and managers who have held their faith in us, and to the public agencies such as Highlands & Islands Enterprise and EventScotland which have supported us where they could over the through the growing-pains years,” he added.

Bella’s Virtual Festival Awards nominations spanned six different categories including: Best Medium Sized Festival; Grassroots Festival Award ; Family Festival Award; Best Line-up Award; Innovation Award for the Care Bear who lent a sympathetic ear to festival-goers’ problems and the Best Toilet award! The awards are dec ided after a public vote.
Advance weekend ticket prices for the 13,000 capacity 2009 have been held at this year’s level of £80 (and free for children aged 12 & under). And Bella has introduced a new ‘On-TICKet’ scheme which allows buyers to pay a deposit to secure their tickets and then the balance by 1st May 2009.

“Families with kids at home and mortgages are among the hardest hit sectors in the current economic climate. Many of our audience come from this sector and our On-TICKet scheme is designed to help them,” said festival co-director Joe Gibbs.

“That said, I’ m sure the Scots were the last people off the dance-floor at the Duchess of Richmond’s Ball before Waterloo and no economic crisis will curb our natural propensity to enjoy ourselves,” he added.

This year’s Belladrum Festival featured Scouting For Girls and The Waterboys as headliners plus over 100 artists including Edwyn Collins, The Lemonheads, Cold War Kids, Idlewild and Jefferson Starship.

Belladrum 2009 takes place on Friday 7th and Saturday 8th August 2009 in the beautiful Highland surroundings of Belladrum Estate, near Beauly in Inverness-shire. Now in its sixth year, the independent festival has built a reputation for its eclectic line-ups, its whacky non-musical entertainments and its all-ages approach.

Tickets can be obtained online from The Booth (www.thebooth.co.uk ), Ticketmaster (www.ticketmaster.co.uk ), Ticketline (www.ticketline.co.uk ), Tickets Scotland (www.tickets-scotland.com ) and Skiddle (www.skiddle.com ).