The world of traditional music played an unexpected and important part in Donald Smith’s life. The very first Edinburgh Folk Festival, back in 1979, had an event that featured Belle Stewart and her daughter Sheila. The Stewarts mostly sang that day but in the middle of it all Sheila came away with a powerful story, ‘Orangie and Aipplie’, and that was it. Donald became a convert to oral storytelling, a move that was to result in his own development as a storyteller, the founding of the Scottish Storytelling Centre, first in the old Netherbow, and then in the refurbishment of that building to the splendid centre we see today, and ultimately to the establishment of TRACS, Traditional Arts and Culture Scotland.
Born of an Irish mother into a complex childhood which found him a son of the manse in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Stirling. All of these places which ignited in Donald an interest in the variety of the Scottish landscape and in language, especially Scots, as he negotiated the different registers of speech and dialects found in these different places. Studying for a PhD at the School of Scottish Studies led to an immersion in Scottish literature and encounters with radical Scottish thought, including that of another great influence, Hamish Henderson, which led him out of the academy and into the life of the Old Town of Edinburgh and the Netherbow in particular.
In Donald’s own words, ‘the Old Town combined a doggedly surviving Scots-speaking community, a physically rundown city centre and a historical environment of unparalleled cultural importance. It was the perfect location for me and everything I have done since comes out of that fusion, between study and reflection on the one hand and social, environmental, cultural and political change on the other.’
Everything Donald Smith has done since includes the steering the group that set up the National Theatre of Scotland, being first Chair of the Literature Forum of Scotland, and, of course, the Scottish Storytelling Centre, of which he was the founding director in 1996. He relinquished that role in 2012 when, working with David Francis, TRACS, Traditional Arts and Culture Scotland, was created bringing together storytelling with the other traditional art forms of music and dance. Donald finally retired from TRACS earlier this year but continues in his role as Director of the Scottish International Storytelling Festival.
Donald Smith is a poet, a storyteller, a writer, and the most eloquent advocate for Scottish culture, especially its traditional arts. We are delighted to present this Hamish Henderson Award to him this evening.