James Kelman on the Dirt Road to Lafayette

https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/10254/anni-donaldson-james-kelman-dirt-road-lafayette Our Celtic Connections columnist Anni Donaldson goes on a musical journey with Dirt Road author James Kelman JAMES KELMAN in conversation with Alan Bisset at a packed ‘meet the author’ session at this year’s Celtic Connections festival was full of surprises.  The ‘connection’ celtic-wise between Kelman’s latest novel, Dirt Road, and Glasgow’s annual music …

Is it time Scotland paid a new piper?

https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/10202/anni-donaldson-it-time-scotland-paid-new-piper Our Celtic Connections columnist, Anni Donaldson, explores the politics of gender in Scottish traditional music WITH the chants of a women’s anti-Trump demonstration booming outside Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall, it was an auspicious moment to start a new conversation about gender and Scottish traditional music.  Judging by the audience’s response to the lively discussion …

No Belles de Jour here

  Scottish Review of Books 13 August 2016 http://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/no-belles-de-jour/ WHILST history may be one of the oldest scholarly disciplines, it has, until more recent times mostly averted its gaze from that other so-called ‘oldest profession’, prostitution, particularly in the Scottish context. However, as Louise Settle’s history of prostitution in Edinburgh and Glasgow in the early twentieth …

Equally Safe in Higher Education

Equally Safe in Higher Education at the University of Strathclyde. Project Team and USSA President Raj Jeyeraj and Vice President Gerry McDonnell: LtoR: Kevin Pilkington, Roisin McGoldrick, Gerry McDonnell, Melanie McCarry, Anni Donaldson, Raj Jeheraj Read GlasgowAnni’s blog on Scottish Government’s Equally Safe website about a new project at Strathclyde University to prevent VAW on …

The Archers: coercive control and domestic abuse

Amid a storyline on The Archers radio programme, writing in Common Space Anni Donaldson explains coercive control in abusive relationships and how people can seek help THE ARCHERS’ Helen Titchener really could use an independent domestic abuse advocate (IDA) right now. If Ambridge was in the west of Scotland she could just lift the phone …

Gartocharn couple fly high @GlasgowArtClub @ccfest

t This review first appeared in The Lennox Herald 29 January 2016 Linsey Aitken and Ken Campbell pull off a musical world tour at their first Celtic Connections gig. Like the wild geese taking off above Linsey Aitken and Ken Campbell’s home in Gartocharn on Loch Lomondside, a full house at the Glasgow Art Club …

10 women storming the stage @ccfest @SSeparation

THE sight of 10 women – some of the UK’s most creative and uniquely versatile traditional musicians – walking on stage at the Mitchell Theatre on Sunday 24 January for Songs of Separation as part of Celtic Connections had quite an impact.

@ccfest: Celtic Connections thunders in on The Carrying Stream

This review first appeared in Common Space 15 January 2016 “GIVE us a song!” Growing up in Glasgow in a large extended family of first and second generation Irish immigrants – all good singers – this was an order, not a request. I grew to realise the importance of song to those not long removed from …