An Aberdeen councillor has called for businesses and community members to rally around students in an attempt to “resurrect” the city’s renowned Torcher parade.
The torchlit procession, which features dozens of floats snaking down Union Street, was cancelled this week for the first time in more than 100 years.
It comes after Aberdeen City Council refused to grant Aberdeen University Students Association a licence for the event, due to a lack of staff available to carry out traffic management.
Now Councillor Ross Grant has asked locals to support the students, so that the parade can be held again next year.
He said: “Both Councillor Ramsay Milne and I are part of the Student Community Partnership, which is a group representing student bodies, local communities and other stakeholders.
“From our perspective, and as members of this partnership, we are calling on an extra meeting of this partnership with everyone around the table to discuss how we can take forward, resurrect and revitalise the Torcher Parade for the future.
“In recent years the number of floats has declined, as well as the general footfall for it. So we need to discuss how we can bring back the crowds and make it something exciting to go and visit.
“We’re not sure about the feasibility of whether that could be next year or a point further on in the future, but we need to discuss how we can rebuild the parade itself from the ground up.
“We need to thrash out a discussion about the parade’s current challenges, and how best we can move forward with that, so the students can deliver a well-supported parade for years to come.”
A fixture of the Granite City’s spring calendar, the parade began in 1889 when nurses from the then Aberdeen Royal Infirmary held a torchlit parade to raise much-needed funds for the hospital’s struggling wards.
It subsequently became the traditional culmination of the university’s charity fundraising week, and has raised more than £1million for local causes during its history.