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Three research projects emerging from audio materials in the University of Edinburgh's Scottish Studies Archives (SSA) and from the Greig-Duncan folksong collection have forged a new understanding of the role of tradition in Scotland and internationally. These projects contribute to the reanimation of Scotland's rich traditional heritage by transferring into a contemporary context music and song preserved in these cultural artefacts. Through our websites (since 2010 ca. 9,000 hits per month from 98 different countries), public performances in Scotland, Ireland and North America, educational packages, CDs and radio broadcasts (ca. 50,000 weekly listeners 2008-13) we combine the old with the new, and have thus influenced the way the cultural and educational professions, performers and the general public engage with the traditional arts of Scotland.
Dr Richard Noakes led `Connecting Cornwall', a project working with the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum (PTM) from February 2009 - July 2012, looking at the lives and careers of the `ordinary' men who operated the Victorian and Edwardian British submarine cable network.
The project was fundamental in building a working relationship with PTM that now paves the way for future research-based collaborations. The exhibition also raised the profile of PTM. A new section of the website was created for PTM, greatly improving its online presence and user experience. Impacts on the public have included providing access to previously unseen archival material, preserving and displaying artefacts of cultural heritage and in educating people with regards to their local history.
The Rylands Cairo Genizah Project has had impact through its conservation, presentation, and interpretation of an internationally important archive of manuscripts which illuminate all aspects of the history, and the religious, social, and commercial life of the Jews in the Levant from the 9th to the 19th centuries. This collection is of deep interest to the Jewish community in the UK and abroad, and forms part of the cultural capital of this country, where the vast bulk of it is now housed. The project has also had an impact on heritage experts, by developing methods which have been applied to recording and disseminating other cultural assets.
James Hogg (1770-1835) is an important but hitherto little known nineteenth-century Scottish author and songwriter. In recent years, Stirling research has demonstrably expanded the audience for Hogg's songs and poetry in Scotland, the wider UK, and USA. Contemporary writers and artists have become more engaged with Hogg's work, and among the public this research has generated greater appreciation of the Scottish literary and music tradition in particular, while promoting Scottish cultural heritage in general, at home, and around the world.
The Gutzkow project, co-directed by Lauster and Vonhoff of the Department of Modern Languages (German), has transformed public access to the author's work through open-access, on-line publication. The project, which combines specialist scholarship with innovative editing, has considerably enhanced public appreciation of a widened canon of 19th-century German literature (impact 1). User testimonies, the international press, public acknowledgement and public involvement in events in the region reveal a significant renewal of public interest in Gutzkow. The editorial results of the Gutzkow project have been requested by an interdisciplinary linguistic digitization project in Berlin and will be fully integrated in this open access linguistic database (impact 2).
Strandlines was designed to create a community, digital and real, for an area of central London (the Strand) where there was none. Using life writing to bring together local residents, workers, students and visitors, Strandlines has provided a website, www.strandlines.org, and activities by which people explore the meaning of place, discover its histories and exchange experiences and impressions locally, nationally and internationally. Strandlines has brought together academics, the homeless, the elderly, low income residents, local people, archivists, writers, artists and the public to foster community through a common interest in their locality, and to understand better its significance for the world.
One of Scotland's cultural treasures, the Reformation-era Wode Partbooks (also known as the Wode Psalter), their music and their Reformation world have been brought together from locations in museums across Scotland and Europe for the first time and introduced and made better known to audiences within Scotland, the UK and internationally. Through public engagement this project has enriched awareness of the Scottish and British heritage and the value of the Wode Partbooks as a cultural object and record of the cultural impact of the Reformation. The project has also provided an impact on cultural life and education as particular interest groups, such as choirs, church groups, embroiderers and history enthusiasts have been actively engaged through choral and stitching workshops, public psalm-singing events and collaboration over publishing.
Anne Featherstone's ongoing, scholarly research into neglected popular performance practices of the 19th Century has had public impacts well beyond the borders of academia. Popular media interest in her initial, academic publications prompted Featherstone to explore the popular historical novel as an alternative form for the dissemination of her historical research. Her two fiction-based outputs to date have translated original, historical research into the transnational domain of murder mystery fiction, and have been published in French, Italian and (soon) Portuguese versions, as well as in English. Growing recognition of Featherstone's historical expertise has led to numerous public speaking appearances and to the development of ongoing relationships with broadcasters including BBC Radio and TV, who have utilised her research as a means of re-visualising the significance of popular performance cultures for the general public.
This work, summarised in published form, has reshaped the history, musicology and sociology of the bagpipe as a high profile, popular and international musical instrument, enlarging understanding of a misunderstood and stereotyped phenomenon of the nation's culture. Outcomes of the work are changing the intellectual environment for research, teaching and the performer communities. Based on a collection held in the public domain and forensic evidence in database and CD form, `cultural capital' has been created for the nation and the knowledge is safeguarded for future generations and effectively propagated for research. Impact is also evident in international recognition of the work.
Research on Scotland's Turkey Red printed-cotton industry 1840-1960, based on a museum collection of pattern books, has been conducted at the University of Edinburgh 2006-2013 by Nenadic and Tuckett, with cultural, commercial and practice-based impacts. Specifically, it has: (i) generated innovations in collections practices in the National Museums of Scotland, resulting in public and scholarly online access to a collection hitherto unavailable and little understood, and inspiring related digital initiatives in other organizations in the UK; (ii) enhanced cultural confidence in disadvantaged communities with Turkey Red connections through workshops, leading to a MSPs `Parliamentary Motion' and MSP-sponsored exhibition at the Scottish Parliament; (iii) educated and inspired contemporary designers and textile entrepreneurs.