Celebrating the Scots Language with Taylor Dyson

Name: Celebrating the Scots Language with Taylor Dyson
Start: 2026-09-11T19:00:00+01:00
End: 2026-09-11T19:00:00+01:00
Location: St Andrews Heritage Museum

About

As part of the Hamewith exhibition, join St Andrews Heritage Museum for an evening celebrating the Scots Language, through performance. Hosted by Taylor Dyson, and performances from Scots singer Rose Byers and storyteller Eileen Budd. There’s an open mic so bring your favourite song or poem to perform!

Taylor Dyson: Taylor Dyson is a multi-award winning performer, playwright and poet. She was the Scots Scriever 2025-2026 for the National Library of Scotland and won Scottish Book Trust's New Writer's Award for Spoken Word Poetry in 2025. She runs Elfie Picket Theatre with her partner, Calum Kelly and has staged plays across the country including for A Play, A Pie & A Pint, Traverse, Dundee Rep Theatre, Ayr Gaiety. As well as her theatre work, she has performed at festivals and events across the country with her poetry work. A huge advocate for Scots leid, she has hosted the Scots Language Awards for the past 4 years, and hosts, curates and performs at monthly Scots night in Dundee, BLETHER with Sweet Venues.

Eileen Budd: Eileen is a Scottish author, artist and storyteller with TRACS (Traditional Arts and Culture Scotland) and Scottish Book Trust. Raised in Perthshire in a family with a strong tradition of maintaining oral storytelling practises, Eileen specialise in traditional Scottish folklore, folk objects, folk beliefs, origin stories and ancient Scottish legends. Before devoting her life to sharing stories she spent over 20 years working with national museums, including National Museums Scotland and V&A London.  Compelled to maintain her family’s storytelling tradition and use all she learned from working in museums, she now travels all over Scotland sharing the stories, using song, illustration and historic object handling to help bring Scottish tales from history and folklore to life for audiences of all ages. She also regularly provide storytelling sessions for large institutions such as NHS, Historic Environment Scotland, TRACS (Traditional Arts and Culture Scotland), Scottish Book Trust and National Trust Scotland. Eileen's work has been featured in Vogue and STV.

Rose Byers: Rose Byers from Lockerbie, is passionate about Scots Song, in particular the works of Robert Burns, and has performed and played the fiddle across the country, from the Scottish Parliament to the Edinburgh Fringe. With her beautiful clear voice, she has attracted a growing audience. In 2021 she won a Creative Scotland to record her first single, which she wrote with Aaron Jones. Among her awards are the British Museum’s National Volunteer of the Year for her work as junior ambassador of Ellisland, Burns’ farm near Auldgirth and the winner of the Greig Duncan song competition at the Portsoy Haal Festival 2026. Rose is currently studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in the traditional music course for Scots Song.