For more than 30 years, the Scottish Thistle Awards have celebrated the people and businesses making Scotland one of the world’s leading visitor destinations. The 2025 awards took that celebration across the country, with two regional ceremonies followed by the national final, bringing Scotland’s tourism and events industry together across three venues in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
THE BRIEF
VisitScotland brought us on board to deliver the full technical production across the 2025 awards series, creating a cohesive look and feel while adapting the setup to three very different spaces. From pre-production and content through to audio, video, lighting and special effects, everything needed to work together to give the winners, entertainment and those all-important award moments the platform they deserved.
WHAT WE DID
Working closely with VisitScotland’s Events and Exhibitions team, we started long before the first guest arrived, coordinating presentation decks, opening video content and voiceover alongside the wider technical design for each ceremony.
At the centre of each setup was a bespoke LED wall configuration, supported by cameras providing live relay throughout the room. D&B audio systems, Allen & Heath control, wireless microphones and wired comms kept speeches, entertainment and award announcements sounding sharp from start to finish. Then came the show moments. Chauvet and Ayrton fixtures brought colour and movement to winner walks and live entertainment, with haze, low fog and Sparkular effects used to give the biggest moments an extra hit of impact.
THE RESULTS
The result was a series of three connected awards experiences that felt consistent wherever the Thistles landed. By managing the technical production and content as one joined-up delivery, we could adapt to each venue without losing the identity of the awards, creating the right setting to put Scotland’s tourism stars firmly in the spotlight.
