The following letter from Sir Malcolm Macgregor of Macgregor to members of the Standing Council, dated yesterday:

Dear Chiefs,

This email comes as an update on 2014.

As you know Stirling Council decided in the New Year to lay on a clan gathering in July 2014 and announced the fact in March 2011. That led to considerable excitement and anticipation overseas.

The whole aspect of 2014 came to a head a month ago with the imminence of the COSCA /SCSC seminar at Stone Mountain Games on 19th October 2012. 2014 is on the agenda, but there was nothing to say about it.

This led to some serious questions in respect of the plans at Stirling and what was really going on. The overall problem was one of securing a site at Stirling for a large scale gathering which has proved to be very difficult. Consequently there will be no official clan gathering at Stirling in 2014.

The concept now is for a realignment of events to take place in order to:
a) really focus on Bannockburn itself - a key battle at the dawn of the clan system.
and
b) build a strong emphasis on good quality regional events, many of which will be clan based.

The Plans are as follows:

Part 1 is for the National Trust reenactment of the battle of Bannockburn on 28, 29, 30 June 2014 to be a signature event in 2014. An extra day has been added to accommodate the clans. In addition to the re-enactment there will be a distinctive, good quality clan village at the site. The National Trust will run all of this and have done reenactments before at Bannockburn so there is a high degree of confidence in this event. There is also the new visitor centre which will employ state of the art 3-D technology to interpret the battle.

Part 2 is for greater emphasis to be given to regional clan type events such as highland games in which there might be clan participation in 2014. An example is the Aboyne Games in which some 8 clans participate. Reference has also been made to SW Scotland and the Inverness area. The Highland Games council are in discussion with Event Scotland about how to regain the initiative in a fall off in attendance over the years. I am due to meet them at some point to see if the SCSC can help in some way.

Somewhat fortuitously, Glamis Castle is planning a gathering type event in July 2014. I have met with the management there and things are looking very good - providing they get the funding. This event will be of high quality in a fantastic location.

The overall concept behind part 2 is to give greater prominence to the regions, which should go down well with some members of the SCSC and other organisations. In my view it is an interesting concept and one that might bode well for the future. Frank Wherrett has been doing some detailed work on the contribution of the clans to local economies. This still has to be worked up into a formal paper but there is very strong evidence that clans make significant contributions to specific localities in various ways.

Part 3. This is the anticipated clan convention which in the absence of a gathering in 2014 assumes greater importance and will be run at Stirling University for a day sometime between 27 June and 2 July 2014. Owing to the uncertainties over the gathering, little progress has been made here but this should be rectified in the coming months. This convention will build on 2009 and the seminar in 2012 at Stone Mountain.

Other aspects. There might be a march and a concert type event at Stirling Castle - depending on what can be organised and whether there is demand.

There will be announcements made on this realignment of events in 2014 in the next couple of days.

Stone Mountain Seminar

There are some 10 chiefs attending Stone Mountain this year. Consequently the standing council with COSCA is running a seminar on the afternoon of 19th October EST. It is anticipated that this seminar can be watched on the internet. Once the link is confirmed I will forward that to you all under separate cover. Start time will be approximately 7.00 pm UK time.

Alex Leslie will shortly be sending out a newsletter which contains all the details of the seminar and who is involved.

With best wishes,

Malcolm