Tobar an Dualchais: Creative Connections – Online: 25 July 2023

Creative Connections – Online

**This course is now full.  Please ask about the waiting-list.**

Tobar an Dualchais is an online resource dedicated to the presentation and promotion of sound recordings of Scotland’s cultural heritage. Its principal content is songs, music, history, poetry, traditions and stories, recorded from the 1930s onwards.

Tobar an Dualchais has devised this 3-day online short course entitled ‘Creative Connections’ for creative people (visual artists, writers, musicians, budding-folklorists and creative educators) who would like to learn more about the resource, why the material was collected and by whom, and how and why it is of value today.

Participants will be introduced to the archives that supply the Tobar an Dualchais website (the School of Scottish Studies Archive, The Canna Collection & BBC Radio nan Gàidheal) as well as some of the many important tradition-bearers whose recordings populate the site. Tutors will look at how the recordings can be used to explore local creativity, cultural ecology, and environmental awareness as well as much more.

The course will be in English but will discuss themes intrinsically linked to Gaelic. It will be delivered by leading scholars and creative practitioners who have extensive experience with the material, including Dr Mairi McFadyen and Raghnaid Sandilands.

Sessions will include:

• A role for local archives in the global climate crisis with Mairi McFadyen
• Creative community engagement and the archives with Raghnaid Sandilands
• The citizen fieldworker including case study from South Uist with Mairi McFadyen & Decker Forrest

The course will emphasise creative engagement. Participants will be encouraged to think about their own creative responses to the material and will be given the tools and inspiration required to begin exploring possibilities for their own work – whether a community-based project, artwork, piece of writing or musical performance.

If you have any questions or would like to know more about the course, please email Floraidh Forrest at:  . You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates and insights into the online resource.

Examples from Tobar an Dualchais:

• Mary Morrison recorded by John Lorne Campbell in 1950 singing the piobaireachd song, ‘A Cholla Mo Rùin’.
• Annie Arnott recorded by Calum Iain MacLean in 1953 singing a strathspey ‘Falbhaidh Mise ’s Padra Mòr’
• Angus MacLellan reciting ‘Duan na Ceàrdaich’ in 1949 for John Lorne Campbell.