We had a lovely time in Glasgow’s Oran Mor presenting the Saltire Society with a Hands Up for Trad Landmark Award to celebrate their 80th birthday. It was a night of presentations, poetry and music from Karine Polwart, Blue Rose Code and Cherrygrove. Congratulations to the Saltire Society – they do fab work throughout the culture sector. Below is my speech.
What a difference eighty years makes. In 1936 there was a feeling among a group of people who cared about Scottish culture that great traditions were being lost, that the achievements of the past were in danger of being unrecognized in the future and that the contemporary arts lacked vitality. That was the birth of the Saltire Society – an organisation set up to promote, present, publish, agitate and debate across the length and breadth of Scotland.
It’s interesting to wonder if the same group of people came along today, would they feel the same urgency to form the Saltire Society? I let you ponder that!
It is my pleasure though to be here tonight to represent Hands Up for Trad and celebrate the Society’s 80 years of cultural action and present them with one of our Landmark Awards. Here’s to the next 80 years of the Saltire Society. If they do half as well again Scotland’s culture is in safe hands.
Read more about the Saltire Society.