I thought I’d just do a quick update post on the tour I did for Waverley Care. Maybe it’ll become a yearly thing or perhaps it’s a once off, but at any rate it is a thing which deserves a post. So what am I talking about for anyone who hasn’t heard about it? Let’s explore together.
The Walking Tour for Waverley Care
What tour?
Just in case anyone reading this is unaware of the Street Historians extended universe, we are a walking tour company that likes to be different. Rather than just offering the same standard walking tours of Edinburgh, we also have one about women, one about LGBTQ history, and we’re working on broadening our range. This tour is a way of telling important stories which might otherwise be neglected by visitors and locals.
Part of the appeal we’re going for is to be an interesting event for locals as well as visitors. They told me there isn’t a local market for walking tours, but I’ve actually noticed that people already in Edinburgh are quite keen on finding out more about it.
Who is Waverley Care?
Waverley Care is Scotland’s leading HIV prevention charity, who also work on other conditions such as Hepatitis. Since the HIV and AIDS crisis was so massive in Scotland, about 8 times the infection rate of the rest of the UK, their work was especially important. Waverley Care educated people on the dangers and how to avoid spreading and contracting HIV and AIDS, but furthermore they provided a first of its kind hospice for patients with AIDS. That hospice was called Milestone House and it was a pioneering venture for care.
This year, they announced they were closing this hospice. On the one hand, this is a sad loss of a an important part of LGBTQ history in Scotland. On the other hand, it’s a hospice where people were going to die in dignity, and the reason it’s closing is because death is no longer common from HIV or AIDS and in fact, AIDS is now essentially a historic term in Scotland.
Now the campaign is to try and get HIV transmissions to 0 by 2030.
Fun fact about Milestone House
Milestone House was the hospice which Princess Diana visited before she managed to greatly reduce the stigma against people with AIDS with a couple of sentences.
“HIV does not make people dangerous to know. You can shake their hands and give them a hug: Heaven knows they need it”.
She helped to bring in a more compassionate response. That’s what Milestone House was for, and that’s what Waverley Care try to engender to this day.
More should be known about their work
This is part of why I am a guide. I tell stories founded in well-researched fact, and these stories are a way to communicate things that happened which mattered. This filters through all our tours, from the general purpose Old Town tour to the incoming True Crime tour. The LGBTQ tour is ground which needs more people to know about it. This is history that affected thousands of lives and which continues to affect them to this day. Knowing that our great city has had a part to play in the international response to AIDS is a vital part of the story.
So, a bit of an action report on my tour
Looks like I still have a lot to learn about marketing!
Right, so it’s kind of on me that though I did put out some pretty great posts on social media
designed for me by the amazing Derek at Gawrjuhs, I didn’t do a blog post which is normally one of my main ways of getting the word out. This limited the personal touch which has typified the Street Historians approach to events like this, which I’m a little put out by. It had a compounding impact that I didn’t send all the emails I meant to beforehand to get the word out more, early enough for people to be fully informed. A lot of these are fairly elementary marketing errors, the type I made last year when putting together my charity tour.
In my defence, I’ve been beset by seasonal illnesses and forgot to set up a proper calendar of events. This hampered my ability to get out the word as well as I could and that limited the effectiveness of my operation.
Looks like I have learnt a few things about marketing
As much as I was not feeling great about my performance for Waverley Care up until the Saturday before the Sunday tour, it has turned out actually pretty well in the end. A big reason for this is because the Street Historians has increasingly become a known quantity.
I ask guests how they found us and a couple today were aware prior because they had heard about the LGBTQ tour through various methods. Building relationships with various people, particularly with Nicholas Malizia at Edinburgh Live – he called me pioneering and that’s sticking with me for a bit – and also Michael MacLeod at the Edinburgh Minute, who took time out of a brief break to make sure he broadcast the city’s events.
It’s proof that what the LinkedIn crowd say is sort of true, your network is your networth. Or as I like to say, the true tour was the friends we made along the way.
A conclusion
In many ways, as founder of the Street Historians, I am our fiercest critic. I get to see the successes and failures up close. It matters to me that our charity work is done as well as possible.
This all being said, it’s helping to get the word out and keep the story in the public imagination. My hope is that some people who have never heard of Waverley Care are now aware of it. I also hope that some people donate as this is a great way to assist their work.
And hopefully this can be part of the learning experience of how I can keep working to make the Edinburgh Street Historians the best, most socially aware, and most interesting tour operator on the planet.
The writer of this piece has ambitions.
Leave a Reply