Born in Eastbourne and raised between the Sussex marshes and a boarding school in Somerset, Sarah Northcott’s path to Scottish traditional music was not an obvious one. She had violin lessons from around the age of eight until, as a teenager, other things took priority. It was only after moving to Edinburgh that everything changed — and it changed because of a flyer spotted in a pub.
That flyer, found in the Diggers by a work colleague, led Sarah to the very first night of the Scots Music Group at the Adult Learning Project in the early 1990s. She started with whistle classes, began developing her fiddle playing, and quickly found herself absorbed in the Edinburgh traditional music scene of that era — a vivid, energetic world that included late Thursday nights dancing to Shooglenifty at La Belle Angele, which she admits made Friday morning lectures something of a struggle. She left her job with Scottish Conservation Projects to take a postgraduate Community Education course, and the direction of her life was set.
From the very beginning, Sarah’s involvement with the Scots Music Group was both musical and organisational. She became the first chair of the Scots Music Organising Group and later chaired the ALP Association, helping to establish the foundations of what would become one of Scotland’s most important community music organisations. When the popular mixed instrument class overflowed, she stepped in to teach the overspill — and has been teaching at SMG ever since. She joined the Robert Fish Band, playing for ceilidhs all over Edinburgh and beyond, and has also played with the Little Biggar Band and in an occasional trio with friends Duggi Caird and Matt Smith. Her Playing for Dancing class evolved into the self-running Ceilidh Caleerie Dance Band, which continues to play for community ceilidhs and raise money for SMG.
Alongside her musical work, Sarah spent five years as Volunteer Co-ordinator with Waverley Care Trust, supporting people affected by HIV and AIDS — experience that proved invaluable when she later led the Scots Music Group’s Inspire Project, co-ordinating a team of tutors who delivered music groups in partnership with homeless and mental health charities. Initially funded for a year, the project ran for five in total, creating new music, building connections, and meeting, as Sarah puts it, many inspirational people along the way.
In February 2020, Sarah agreed to step in as Development Worker for a couple of months when her predecessor left SMG. Within weeks, staff, board, and tutors were working together to move classes online during the Covid pandemic — and she is still there. She continues to teach, and has taken on a new challenge co-tutoring the SMG Big Folk Band. Now living in Tweedsmuir in the western Borders, she has also been running the monthly Crooked Sessions since April 2025 — a warmly supportive space for sharing songs, stories, tunes, and poems at the Wee Crook Café — bringing the same community-minded spirit she has always championed to her own corner of rural Scotland.
Sarah is also a composer and arranger, with tunes published in Tunes from the Women, and hopes to find time to put together her own tune book while continuing to teach and create community music opportunities.
She came to Scottish traditional music not through family tradition or childhood immersion but through curiosity, a pub flyer, and the willingness to get stuck in — and in doing so, she found a community she has spent more than thirty years helping to build and sustain. As she says herself, it has brought her enormous joy, both as a musician and in helping others to take part.
Sarah Northcott’s induction into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame recognises over three decades of tireless commitment to community music-making in Scotland, and a quiet, consistent generosity of spirit that has opened the door to traditional music for countless people who might otherwise never have found their way in.