The Aberdeen Independence Movement (AIM) pre-conference event has quickly become a fixture of conference season with people from up and down the country marking the date in their calendar as an essential fixture of SNP conference, with last year’s event selling 240 tickets for an evening of discussion, comedy and music. This year AIM have decided to put on their most ambitious event to date, using the move to online events as an opportunity to put on an event that Jack Gillies, co-chair of AIM says will “blow previous years out the water”.
The suspension of large offline events has posed a major challenge to Yes groups, but Alan Petrie, co-organiser of AIM sees the move online as an opportunity, saying “We have seen a lot of chatter about people missing the rallies and marches, so we decided to organise the nearest thing we could to a rally with quality music, comedy and political discussion. Covid has had many challenges for groups like ours but it also offers huge opportunities to innovate. There won’t likely be any big safe Yes rallies any time soon, so we thought we must innovate and bring an uplifting evening just before St Andrews day for the movement. The evening will be an uplifting start to SNP conference, but this event is for everyone in the Yes movement, not just SNP members”.
Tickets will be on sale for £10 from Hopin, with a limited number of early tickets available for £6, and a discount for AIM members also available. The move online has allowed the group to cut costs, but they argue that they have not cut corners, with Alan Petrie saying “to put a physical event on like this in a venue with the entertainment acts that we have booked we would have had to have set ticket prices at at least £25 to make it financially viable. Doing the event virtually we can keep entry price low, bring quality acts to you, while paying the acts the going rate; the UK government maybe don’t treat the arts and artists with respect and value, but we do. The evening will be four hours of entertainment from well-known artists and speakers. Award winning Trad singer Iona Fyfe, award winning comedian Viv Gee and playwright and author Alan Bisset will perform sets on the evening”.
So far some of the biggest names in politics and the greater movement have signed up to take part; with the political side of the evening seeing a mixture between a panel discussion, Q&A, an interview and keynote speeches. The speakers that have been named so far include Kate Forbes MSP, Mike Russell MSP, Humza Yousaf MSP, Valentina Servera Clavell, Aamer Anwar, Kaukab Stewart, Charlotte Armitage, Stacey Bradley, Tom Wills, Cllr Vicky Harper, Pete Wishart MP and the National’s very own Richard Walker. Hosted on the evening by Fatima Joji and Jack Gillies.
With no marches at this time, this is the perfect opportunity for the Yes movement to come together and show its strength of numbers and its vibrancy. This event is an event for all the Yes movement, not just SNP members
The evening will also see contributions from Skotia and Believe in Scotland. Hopins networking facility will be open, so you can chat with other Yessers. AIM are determined that this will be a high quality and interactive experience and will be using the same high end platform that the SNP conference will be using.
The pre-conference event will be held on the 27th of November from 6PM to 10PM and tickets can be purchased here: https://hopin.to/events/aim-pre-conference-event
Here is the link for a 2 pound off discount for National readers https://hopin.com/events/aim-pre-conference-event?code=9b18b672480527c14fe4cd00ae86
