With thirteen award categories spanning across sectors of business, education, performance, and the arts, the Scots Language Awards recognise dedication to the preservation and promotion of the Scots language. In their eighth edition, the awards represent the unabating role that the indigenous language plays in the country’s sense of historical identity and present-day community — a fact reinforced by the record 7000 members of the public who cast their votes. In 2025, the competition received only half this level of public engagement and thus this year’s unanticipated turnout is a refreshing indication of the renewed enthusiasm for the language and the celebration of Scottish heritage.
Hosted by Lynne Campbell and Taylor Dyson, ten awards were decided by public vote with the remaining three — Scots Champion, the Janet Paisely Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Young Scots Writer of the Year Award — being selected by a judging panel. The event saw 49 shortlisted from across Scotland, with the nominees and their respective categories illustrating the myriad forms of creative expression into which the language is infused. Receiving the Scots in Business award was Edinburgh’s Scottish Storytelling Centre, an organisation who were recognised for their work in allowing traditional stories and arts to be shared, recollected, and honoured as a means to assure the connection of the current generation to the past upon which their sense of cultural identity is founded.
The centre celebrates the Scots tongue by hosting live performances as well as creating a convivial, inclusive atmosphere through their workshops and family events. The Scottish Traveller proverb used by the centre as an exemplification of their core purpose is indeed upheld in their reception of this award: they have been spotlighted for their perseverance to communicate Scottish ancestral stories “eye to eye, mind to mind and heart to heart,” in spite of the current sense of instability which underlies the study and celebration of languages.
After the University of Edinburgh’s decision to cut 90 of its courses — over half of which within the school of Literature, Languages, and Cultures — the commendation given to the Scottish Storytelling Centre serves to oppose this notion that the study of indigenous languages, and indeed of languages as a whole, is an outdated, insignificant endeavour.
With seven programmes in Celtic and Scottish studies being axed, it is unsurprising that students and members of the community alike fear a “cultural and linguistic erasure” (University of Edinburgh Scottish Society), however, both the unprecedented involvement of the public in the Scots Language Awards and the recognition of a local organisation act as a reminder that languages, being inextricably linked to a nation’s identity, retain their relevance despite a social context which is seemingly desperate to sever itself from its foundations.
Photo by abdullah ali on Unsplash
