Get Involved
Fire Starter Festival is all about self-organising and collaborating. The festival needs you, your creative thinking and your bravery in order to make it successful. The work is supported by a small team from the Collective Leadership team at the Scottish Government but the vast majority of the festival’s events are hosted by people passionate about Fire Starter Festival. FSF is an annual festival, taking place in February.
We support event organisers in putting on their own events on topics and themes that matter to them, while also hosting the launch and a few events during the festival. FSF celebrates doing something a bit different than usual. It is a great platform, opportunity to connect with a different audience than usual and play around with the format of your event.
FSF provides a unique opportunity to share the stories of these fires of change, as well as deepening our knowledge and skills that underpin transformation. It allows people from communities and public service to share innovative and creative ways that we are all making a difference to Scotland.
Hosting Fire Starter Events
Fire Starter Festival 2021 has now passed and you cannot upload events at this stage. If you are interested in hosting an event in the next year, do sign up to our newsletter to stay up-to-date for new events and opportunities.
Join our weekly Campfires
An opportunity to connect with the Fire Starter and Creative Bravery Community and spark off any ideas that emerge for your throughout the week.
We welcome anyone who is interested in how we reimagine society and public services; tackle local and global issues, as well as paying attention to how we maintain our ability to survive and thrive in times like these. Bring along your burning questions, ideas to ignite, and the things you want to burn to reimagine the world we live in. Your insights and diverse perspectives are what we need to fuel interesting conversations and keep the campfire going!
The Fire Starter Ethos
The Fire Starter Festival has been designed to celebrate the various creative, innovative, even dangerous ways in which we can all contribute to the transformation of our communities and public services. Events hosted during the festival must:
- free to attend – there is no charge for participation in Fire Starter events.
- accessible and open – events must be open to participants, no matter their organisation or background.
- self-organised – events must be organised by those hosting them and their partners. Unfortunately the Fire Starter Festival team has limited capacity and cannot support, resource or fund events.
We also think that events hosted during the Fire Starter Festival should fit comfortably within our aims. Fire Starter events should:
- celebrate and share creative, innovative and dangerous ways in which you and your partners are transforming public services.
- give participants opportunities to hear about and get involved in areas of work which they may not have been exposed to before.
- be hosted in creative, different and engaging ways, making best use of your talents, skills and interests, both in and out of work.
- make use of different spaces, venues and locations across Scotland, both indoor and outdoor.
What is in it for you?
You may want to host a bespoke event on a theme, topic or area of work you feel aligns to our ethos.
Either way, there are many benefits to projects, programmes and organisations who host events through the Fire Starter Festival, including opportunities to:
- showcase your work.
- extend networks and develop ideas with new partners.
- participate in a national platform evidencing innovation and creativity in public service.
- collaborate and use public resources more effectively and efficiently.
- help shape the future of public services.
Roles and Responsibilities
We hope that you will join us and add an event to the Fire Starter Festival programme. To help you, below are a few of the responsibilities we hold as festival organisers, as well as a few of the responsibilities we expect event hosts to take on. You can see more about that in our partnership agreement.
Your Role - The Event Host
- You, and your event partners, will resource all facilitation and administration required to put on your event. We have a small team and unfortunately cannot offer support for individual events.
- You will publicise your event (and hopefully the festival as a whole) to your networks. The most successful events are those that have been publicised by hosts as well as the Fire Starter Festival organisers.
- You will share outputs from your event – whether photos, case studies, videos or evaluations – with the Fire Starter Festival organisers, to help us build evidence of the impact of the festival.
- You will have fun! Fire Starter Festival is all about creativity and innovation – we hope you will keep the spirit of creativity and play with you throughout the process of participating in the festival.
Our Role - The Fire Starter Team
- We will maintain the overall programme for the Fire Starter Festival, and will help you choose a date, venue, topic or partners to maximise the impact of your event.
- We will host and organise the Launch event of the Festival (in Scotland).
- We will host all Fire Starter Festival events on our events calendar on our website, maximising the reach and engagement for all events. All hosts will be given editorial rights over their events, though we can offer support in using the portal.
- We will share all Fire Starter events in the Festival Programme, which will be circulated widely around public and third sector networks in Scotland.
- We will publicise the Fire Starter Festival as a whole, and will help you to make connections to new sectors and organisations.
We are here to help!
If you’re wondering whether your event fits within the FSF programme or for any other questions, please contact us via the contact form to discuss further.