TRADITIONAL ARTS AND CULTURE SCOTLAND 

The Òrain is Sgeulachdan na Fèinne project is a trilingual, multidisciplinary, traditional arts project which aims to share the songs and stories of the Fianna in an accessible way with a modern ....more

The Òrain is Sgeulachdan na Fèinne project is a trilingual, multidisciplinary, traditional arts project which aims to share the songs and stories of the Fianna in an accessible way with a modern day audience.  The Finn Cycle stories and songs have been passed down through generations with some collected as field recordings by the School of Scottish Studies in the 1950s and 1960s, while others were preserved in printed collections in Scotland and Ireland, although few still survive in modern oral tradition.  The stories and songs are not as well known in Scotland in the present day as they are in Ireland, and this project aims to highlight the riches of the shared Gaelic traditions to a wider audience, in Scotland, Ireland and further afield. This is a continuing project involving collaboration between three Gaelic speaking artists and two Gaeilge speaking artists who have been studying the songs and stories of the Fianna together for the past two years and who have created an hour long trilingual performance of some of this material, entitled An Ceòl air Feadh na Fèinne. We would like to take the An Ceòl air Feadh na Fèinne performance on tour to some of the Gaelic speaking communities in the Scottish islands.  As part of the tour, the group will also hold workshops in Gaelic medium schools, further exploring and sharing the songs, stories, languages and resources with students of different ages. We aim to highlight the importance of these songs and stories in the shared Gaelic traditions of Scotland and Ireland and to bring them back to Gaelic speaking communities in their languages of origin.  The performance and workshops will be trilingual, and as such are also accessible to people who do not speak Gaelic or Gaeilge and therefore may be unaware of this shared Finn tradition of songs and stories. We also aim to explore the similarities and difference between the Scottish and Irish Gaelic languages, and to enable the Scottish Gaelic speaking communities to accses the songs and stories through the medium of Gaeilge, as well as Gaelic.

This ‘Scotland’s Year of Stories’ aligned project re-tells tales of Fionn MacCumhaill and other Celtic heroes through songs, stories and music.  The Finn Cycle stories and songs have been ....more

This ‘Scotland’s Year of Stories’ aligned project re-tells tales of Fionn MacCumhaill and other Celtic heroes through songs, stories and music.  The Finn Cycle stories and songs have been passed down through generations with some collected as field recordings by the School of Scottish Studies and The National Folklore Collection, and others being collected by folklorists for manuscript and print publications.  The stories and songs are not as well known in Scotland in the present day as they are in Ireland, and this project will highlight the riches of the shared traditions to a wide audience, in Scotland, throughout the UK and Ireland and potentially further afield.  This project will involve a residency collaboration between singers, musicians and storytellers, recreating the tales for a modern audience.  The residency will be situated either in the Republic of Ireland or in Northern Ireland, bringing together Scottish and Irish artists to consolidate on material recorded during the first phase of the project, enabling further performance pieces to be selected, and providing a space for rehearsal of the pieces prior to public performances.  The residential will also provide an opportunity for the artists to work together on content for workshops for Gaelic and Gaeilge medium pupils. This project will include three artists from Scotland and two artists from Ireland and the songs and stories will be performed in Gaelic and Gaeilge.   The performance of the wider collection will be in Scotland at storytelling, cultural and music festivals e.g. Blas Festival, Celtic Connections, and the Scottish International Storytelling Festival.  It is also hoped there will be performance opportunities in Ireland, interest in the project has been shown by the Féile Imram and it may also be possible to hold performances at Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich in Belfast and other locations such as Donegal.   Other proposed outreach work tying into public performances would be workshops at local Gaelic or Gaeilge medium schools close to where the performances will be held.  Within the project team, there are 3 fluent speakers of Gaelic and 2 fluent speakers of Gaeilge.  Several of the project team members have skills in both languages, and the workshops could be held entirely through the medium of Gaelic or Gaeilge, or bilingually depending on the situation.  The language skills within the project team will also be beneficial in developing workshop content e.g. a feature of the workshops and performances will also involve explaining words and phrases which are different in the opposite languages to speakers of the other language.   

Unrestricted funding but made in response to plans for a freelance researcher to identify and collate existing archives of Scottish traditional music, as a first step towards creating a single ....more

Unrestricted funding but made in response to plans for a freelance researcher to identify and collate existing archives of Scottish traditional music, as a first step towards creating a single Scottish Traditional Music Archive.

A' toirt luchd-ealain còmhla gus ath-bheothachadh is ath-nuadhachadh sgeulachdan is òrain na fèinne airson an latha an-diugh / Bringing artists together to revitalise and renew stories and songs ....more

A' toirt luchd-ealain còmhla gus ath-bheothachadh is ath-nuadhachadh sgeulachdan is òrain na fèinne airson an latha an-diugh / Bringing artists together to revitalise and renew stories and songs of the fianna for today