Families are entertained and educated at Grant Park 100 festival
FAMILIES enjoyed another successful community event in the centre of town.
The Grant Park 100 festival - organised and run by Forres Events Limited and run by 150 volunteers - marked 100 years since the gifting of the land to the people of Forres by Digestive biscuit inventor, Sir Alexander Grant, with a wide variety of activities from 11am-5pm.
Sir Grant’s great grandson, the honourable Mark Laing, unveiled an oak carving in his honour commissioned by Forres Features, the group behind the Colours of Cluny events of 2016 and 2017.
He said: “The new carving is absolutely brilliant! It’s a lovely piece telling the story of Sir Grant’s life and interests, as well as his connections to Grant Park.
“He would have been very pleased to see so many people celebrating and experiencing the attractions today.
“It was wonderful to see the town remembering his generosity. He would have been very happy to see the park being used as he envisioned 100 years ago.”
He added: “Everyone enjoyed another great event here and its success was thanks to all of the hard work of volunteers.”
Similar in layout to the Forres Highland Games, Grant Park 100 featured central arenas surrounded by sales, entertainment and information stalls.
Events included falconry displays, soapbox carty races and gundog exhibitions. There were children’s races, live music sessions and a tent featuring prizewinning displays of digestive recipes, cake designs, vegetable art creations and photos of the park from the past and present.
Forres Events Limited chairman Alan James was thrilled to see so many attendees engaging.
He said: “Many of the activities were similar to what would have been on offer in 1924, such as the carousel we had up from England. We invited attendees to dress up in garb from the decades since then.
“There were more than 20 have-a-go activities and we added an extra row of stalls.
“My wife Ainsley was head of volunteer recruitment. The organising committee did a sterling job of selecting natural leaders who shared a common goal with their own recruits.”
There were screenings of local filmmaker Yvonne Findlay’s new documentary about Grant Park. Be Like Pablo singer Ewen Watson performed with the band and talked about his illustrated children’s book ‘Fantastic Forres’. And historian Helen Avenell discussed another of Forres’ most celebrated sons - Hugh Falconer.
Ruan Ingles (12) enjoyed Grant Park 100 with his family from Worcester.
He said: “It was really entertaining - there were lots of things to see and do.
“I enjoyed the fairground most, particularly the bungee trampoline.
“The new statue was well presented and I learned a lot including that Sir Alexander Grant invented the Digestive biscuit!”
Enjoy much more reaction and pictures in next week’s Forres Gazette.
