Each year the 25th of January marks international celebration of the works of Robert Burns, the most well known writer in the Scots language. But in the cold January morning of the night before, what is the future of Scots?
Over the course of 2021-2023 a new collaborative research project initiated by the University of Glasgow, and supported by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, is seeking to answer that important question. While over 1.5 million people in Scotland use or have some knowledge of Scots, there is no coherent research agenda on language policy and planning for the language. The research aims to change that by setting a new agenda towards a community-driven language policy.
The University of Glasgow has partnered with Oor Vyce and Education Scotland to bring together voices of people from a range of backgrounds who’d like to make positive change for the Scots language. The research will collect ideas from the public, examine these in greater detail at stakeholder workshops, and bring them to a final symposium that can build a consensus on the future of Scots.
To set the agenda, people from across Scotland (whether Scots speakers or not) are being asked to take 5–10 minutes to share how they see the future of Scots.