Traditional Artist in Residence at the School of Scottish Studies Archives

The beginning of this month marked my first few weeks as the new Artist in Residence at the School Of Scottish studies archives, with the school of Scottish and Celtic studies.

Last November I was talking at a conference about intangible cultural heritage. I was saying there that one of our models for funding traditional arts is through residencies - and that in my experience this tends to be counter productive because traditional arts and folklore are based in, and woven through, our lives and our places, so we only cultivate our own ‘folk’ arts if we are in our own places. Or at least that is how it is for me. I basically wanted someone to fund a residency where I can spend a lot of time in my own house doing research. And Hallelujah! Someone heard me.
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Along with the time I will be spending in my house, I will be in the home of the Scottish Traditional Arts themselves, the School of Scottish studies. 

My book collection has loads of Scottish Studies Archive adjacent goodies in, and im looking forward to setting aside a bit more time to actually read them!

This is a two year post, roughly split up across a day a week.  My proposal for the two year residency was to spend time exploring the connections between tangible and intangible cultural heritage. I have drawn on the audio archives (especially those accessible on Kist O Riches / Tobar an Dulchas) and I wanted to build on that by looking at things in the archives that related to songs, but also allow aspects of songs to be forgotten.
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The fancy way I said this was… “This work addresses a gap in understanding about how forgetting can be productive in Scots song tradition transmission and how memory ecologies, scaffolded by tangible heritage, might open new avenues for regenerative forms of tradition transmission.”

An Aside: here we can celebrate failure- as originally I wanted to do a Phd with the lovely folk at Stirling University's Science of Place and Memory, which I didnt get - but the ideas I worked on for that process have really got me thinking and influenced a lot else of what Im doing. So thanks guys.

One interesting thing Im already thinking about is how the School of Scottish studies and its archives are a whole culture, or Tradition, in and off themselves- they have almost accidentally created an archive of an archive through the continuous engagement with the original content. And their own lore / ways of doing.
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So, I’ll be sharing my process, things I find, research I’m doing, and conversations Im having. Right now Im just kind of orientating myself to the complexities of university life aka finding my card and getting into the library.

Some notes from a listening session I did in the archives which led to Col My Love, my most listened to song.

I have seen many people I admire go through this residency, here is a youthful photo of Alasdair Roberts looking studious when he was in the same position.