Singing the history of Scottish industrial workers with Margaret Bennett

Margaret Bennett brings Scotland's industrial heritage to life at Kelvin Hall on Wednesday 20 January, from 6:00pm to 7:30pm. It's a folk evening that combines song, story and film, and it forms part of Celtic Connections 2027.

Bennett, a folklorist, singer and storyteller originally from Skye, builds the night around the people who worked Scotland's mills, mines and railways. She draws on the National Library of Scotland's moving image archive and her own recorded interviews with millworkers, coalminers, brickmakers, railway workers and engineers, weaving them together with film footage, images and songs. On the night, she'll be joined by students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

There's a fair bit of background to her work here. She studied folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Ethnology (PhD) at Edinburgh University, and from 1984 to 1996 she was a lecturer and researcher at the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh. Since then, she's joined the part-time staff of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's Traditional Music Department, and she holds titles as Professor of Folklore and Antiquities at the RSA in Edinburgh and Honorary Fellow at the University of St Andrews.

The evening is hosted by the National Library of Scotland within Kelvin Hall, at 1445 Argyle Street in the West End, just across the river from Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Payment is required, with booking fees on top. It runs from 6:00pm to 7:30pm on Wednesday 20 January.