In addition to celebrating our 70th anniversary, our publication Tocher turns 50 too!

Named after the Scots word for dowry, Tocher was created in response to share fieldwork by the staff and researchers of The School of Scottish Studies (now the Department of Celtic & Scottish Studies).  Material from the archive was transcribed using the interviewee’s own words; Gaelic was translated into English and regional dialects from the Scots language were also included.

We look forward to sharing some of the articles collected on the tales, songs and traditions of the last 50 years of Tocher and the recordings too. We also have some posts lined up with people who worked on the team to create Tocher.

Today we wanted to draw your attention to the blog of the Volunteers in Community Engagement at UoE Collections (VOiCE).

VOiCE are a student group of volunteers, who run a monthly newsletter, podcast and blog about the different collections, people and museums at the University of Edinburgh. We are delighted that today they are highlighting Tocher’s anniversary in their newsletter and we have some exciting plans afoot to collaborate further with VOiCE this year.

Please read and enjoy their post on 50 Years of Tocher, written by VOiCE member, and Celtic and Scottish Studies Masters student, Lily Mellon.

You can sign up to the VOiCE newsletter to be kept up to date with their projects and engagement with UOE collections: https://voiceblog1.wordpress.com/join-us/

VOiCE are on social media and you can find all their links here: https://linktr.ee/voiceed

You can listen to the VOiCE podcast – We’ve Got History Between Us – on Spotify.