Courtesy of Scottish Screen Archive

The first post-synchronised sound film made in Scotland, Sunny Days (1931) was one of a series of films made to raise money for the Necessitous Children's Holiday Camp Fund (NCHCF).

Glasgow Education Authority organised holidays for the necessitous children of the city from the 1920s onwards. The NCHCF was established to raise money to meet the expenditure for this venture. Sunny Days was made for the dual purpose of showing the tremendous amount of good the holiday camps were doing and as an appeal to raise finances for future camps. It would have been screened in commercial cinemas and at community events across the city. After a screening, the cinema lights would go up, and a collection box was handed around the audience. Between 1925 and 1937, NCHCF organised holidays for 67,984 city children at the coast or in the country - an average of 5229 per year.

Kenneth Broom

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