TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF CELTIC CONNECTIONS

That this House congratulates Glasgow's annual Celtic Connections festival as it celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2018; notes that the festival, which began in 1994 based in Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall attracting around 32,000 visitors, now extends to over 300 events in 28 venues, including the SSE Hydro, and has regularly sold well over 100,000 tickets in recent years, attracting over 2,000 musicians and artists to its stages and making a significant contribution to Glasgow's economy in the winter months; further notes the role of the festival in providing an important platform for promoting young and emerging talent in Scottish traditional music, and collaborations between traditional Scottish and world music artists from across the globe; understands that the festival can now apply for funding of up to £100,000 from the Scottish Government's Festivals Expo fund, to support the development of traditional music and encourage new talent in traditional music, and effectively gives the festival a national status in Scotland; believes that Celtic Connections has made an important contribution to Scotland's cultural life, cementing its reputation as one of the world's leading traditional music festivals; and further congratulates Artistic Director Donald Shaw and all at Celtic Connections on reaching this important milestone and hopes that the festival will continue to go from strength to strength in the coming years.