Joining the Team at Local Voices
It was announced this week that I will be joining community enterprise Local Voices as a co-director.
It is a joy to join fellow ethnologists Chris and Steve on the Local Voices team. Together they have a wealth of experience and knowledge and have really led the way with their approach to applied ethnology and place-based traditional arts education in Scotland. They create deeply thoughtful projects that encourage children and communities to connect with each other, with their place and with their past, modelling an educational approach that places relationship, culture and personal and community empowerment at the centre of learning.
In an increasingly rootless, alienating and commercialised world, where so many are predisposed to looking out to mass media culture, the consciousness-raising work of organisations like Local Voices is vital. Our cultural memory and local traditions are important not as ‘relics of an imagined national past’ or ‘cultural products for export,’ but as a creative, vital and meaningful resource for the future. The Local Voices approach highlights the importance of seeing tradition as rooted in place but not fixed in history, rather as a living tradition moving forward through time in a way that is inclusive of all those who live here.
“Local Voices is an organisation with a mission to help communities across Scotland identify, collect and engage with their local heritage. We aim to celebrate the traditions and diversity of local communities in the global age, taking in language, song, story, music and memory. To that end, we deliver a variety of projects in schools and wider communities across Scotland, with special focuses on Scots language and traditional arts.”
"Having worked with her in various guises over the past few years in a range of cultural and academic projects, I'm delighted that Mairi is joining us in Local Voices. I've seen first-hand her organisational and presentational abilities, backed up by rigorous research skills, grounded in her belief in the importance of viewing the cultural ecology of people, their communities and - crucially for our work - their place. With a keen eye for design and detail, as well as a rich constituency of contacts developed in recent years, Mairi's talents will be a real asset to Local Voices, enhancing our planning and strategic capabilities. I'm looking forward to working with her on a range of inspiring projects across Scotland in the coming year." Steve Byrne, Ethnologist, Folklorist and Musician @arbroathsinger
"Mairi's skills and vision will bring tremendous benefit to Local Voices, in particular her fantastic ability to describe and clarify the complex cultural and social processes which are at the heart of our work in communities. These qualities and strengths are rooted in her fundamental passion for local culture and everyday creativity, and our collaborations in the past have yielded a great deal of insight into how Local Voices might improve our practice. I'm very excited to embark on our coming programme of work, including a significant development phase, which will both now bear the hallmarks of Mairi's talent and imagination." Chris Wright, Ethnologist, Folklorist and Musician @scotssong
“In a condition of cultural citizenship, everyone feels at home in their own community; everyone feels that their heritages are valued; that their contributions to community life and cultural fabric have equal weight and value for people. Everyone wants to know their neighbours, to be part of something together, a story that is bigger than all of our small stories together.”