Exciting New Opportunity for Young Creatives to Work in Gaelic and Scots
A new project Sgrìobh | Scrieve set up in partnership with Eden Court and Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches (TAD/KOR) will give two young emerging artists the opportunity to create their own music and poetry in Gaelic and Scots. The project will allocate time for the artists to explore the TAD/KOR website in depth as inspiration for creating new work, which they will perform at Eden Court’s Under Canvas 2024.
Anndra Cumming from Laide, Gairloch has been selected as the Gaelic artist for the project. He is a recent graduate of the National Centre for Excellence in Plockton, and he plays the accordion and bagpipe, as well as composing his own songs in Gaelic. His musical influences include Niteworks and Kathleen MacInnes and Anndra is one of the musicians taking part in the Fèis Rois Ceilidh Trail this summer.
Anndra stated: “I was very excited when I found I had been selected for this project. I have written a few songs in the past, but I think this project will help my creativity. I am planning to do a lot of research using Tobar an Dualchais and speaking to people I know, to find inspiration to write a song about my home area of Wester Ross.”
The artist chosen for the Scots leid is Lucy Beth, who is a Doric speaker from Inverurie in Aberdeenshire. She is a performer who writes poetry in her native language and is particularly enthusiastic about using her performances to show people that the Scots leids and its dialects are still being used and valued by the younger generation, both in everyday life and in the creative industries.
Lucy said: “I am very grateful and excited to have been selected as one of the emerging artists for this fantastic opportunity. Using the KOR website, I have begun researching the famous bothy ballad, ‘Bogie's Bonnie Belle’ and exploring the different versions of it. My goal is to use the research to craft a poem that reimagines the story from Isabelle's perspective, which has historically been overlooked. I aim to highlight her experiences and I am looking forward to sharing my work with audiences at Under Canvas.”
Flòraidh Forrest, Director of TAD/KOR, remarked: “We were very pleased with the high standard of applications we received for the project and anticipate that Lucy and Anndra will create something very special using the TAD/KOR resources to inform their creativity. As emerging artists, their performance at Eden Court will give them the chance to bring their work to new audiences including those local to Inverness and the Highlands, and also to the many visitors from across the world who visit Under Canvas every summer. Sgrìobh | Scrieve is currently a pilot project but we hope to develop it as a larger scale creative project in the future.”
Talking about the significance of this new opportunity, Emily MacDonald, Gaelic Project Manager at Eden Court commented: “Our partnership with TAD/KOR very much supports the creation and performance of Scottish traditional arts in both the Scots and Gaelic languages. We believe that this project will give the artists and their audiences a broader and deeper understanding of Scotland’s diverse traditions, while at the same time creating something new and relevant to Scotland today. We are very grateful to Creative Scotland’s Wee Grants for Creativity in the Scots Leid whose support has made the project possible.”
Anndra and Lucy’s performances at Under Canvas will be on 18 August, starting at 2pm. Also performing that day will be Marcas Mac an Tuairneir, Mary Ann Kennedy and Ceitidh Chaimbeul who will be giving a performance of Gaelic, Scots and English poetry, music and song. Tickets are available at https://eden-court.co.uk/event/sgriobh-scrieve-paillean-nam-bard
Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches is an online resource dedicated to the presentation and promotion of audio recordings of Scotland’s cultural heritage. Its principal content is songs, music, history, poetry, traditions and stories, recorded from the 1930s onwards. The website contains material from three archives: The School of Scottish Studies, The Canna Collection and BBC Radio nan Gàidheal and there are recordings in Gaelic, Scots and English. There are currently over 47,000 recordings on the website.