Why I'm making a new documentary celebrating Scots language

Thrawn, by Ayrshire filmmaker Ashley Dick, looks to unpack “how the Scots language has been dragged through the gutter and re-emerged”.

The project – which is still in development – follows Dick’s own journey of redefining her own relationship with the language, while also featuring a few familiar faces from the TV and film industry.

Ashley Dick is a 34-year-old filmmaker from Ayrshire (Image: Ashley Dick)

The documentary is well-timed, with Scots recognised as an official language in the Scottish Parliament earlier this year.

Dick, 34, said “there’s been a clear big shift” since the language received official status in Scotland, adding that she wants her documentary to “look to the future of the language and culture, and make steps toward preservation and celebration”.

This is reflected in the documentary’s title, Thrawn, which Dick said “is about feeling uncertain but also being quite stubborn”.

“There’s a pride and a shame that run through being Scottish,” Dick said.

“Although we have been told that Scots is wrong, we are stubborn, strong, unyielding – and thrawn.”

Much of the project reflects on “redefining” her own relationship with the language, looking back to when she entered a poetry competition in school.

Ashley Dick pictured as a child winning a Burns competition (Image: Ashley Dick)

“When I was a kid, I was always picked for the Burns competition. I would get up in front of the school and I’d be the one winning the trophy for the best Scots recital,” Dick told the Sunday National.

“But then, when I got to adulthood, I completely dropped all identifiable markers of being really broadly Scottish.

“I grew up with a perception that my culture, and my heritage, the way my parents and grandparents spoke to me, was wrong.

“You were taught that Scots was not a language, it was ‘slang’.”

The project was truly set into motion when Scottish comedian and actor Karen Dunbar – best known for Chewin’ The Fat and The Karen Dunbar Show – took an interest.

“I’ve been having conversations with people for about three or four years. I’d had this idea that it could become a documentary, but I wasn’t quite sure where to take it yet,” Dick said.

“Then at the start of the year, someone I knew bumped into Karen Dunbar at an event and told her all about my ideas. She told them, ‘oh my god, this is my lived experience, I’m absolutely up for being a part of this’, and we swung into action.”

Dick wanted to challenge the notion that Dunbar is known as “that funny woman off the telly”.

Karen Dunbar interviewed by Ashley Dick (Image: Ashley Dick)

Karen Dunbar (Image: Ashley Dick)

“Everything she said was really profound. She was the perfect person to come in and speak on it,” Dick said.

“She’s part of that world that’s so distinct in the Scots scene. She talked about being known for being really bold and brash and Scottish, and how that’s translated into her real life.

“She hasn’t been doing comedy on TV for 20 years, but that’s still what people expect from her whenever they meet her.

“That assumption that people have about Scottishness, the accent and the language, carried through every project she went into. It’s always been hanging over her; it’s always been the butt of the joke.”

Speaking to the Sunday National, Dunbar shared her support for the project and said it held “a real interest” for her.

Dunbar said: “As a working class Scot born in the 1970s, the confusion about the use of ma mither tongue plagued me for many years: Was I allowed to speak the words I heard around me outside of my home town?

“Thrawn looks at the dichotomy of messages presented to us growing up in a culture that says ‘be proud of who you are (but don’t tell anyone!)’. As ye can imagine, I had plenty to say.”

‘We’re leaving our personality at home’

DICK said she believed many people in Scotland feel “a bit despondent and scattered” when it comes to having a sense of collective identity.

“There’s a massive history around Scots where we haven’t really had the same experience as a lot of other cultures, where there’s something super definitive that we all feel together,” she told the Sunday National.

The filmmaker has traced a shift in the relationship between the Scots language and identity back to the 17th century, when King James VI of Scotland was also crowned as King James I of England in 1603.

“The court in England couldn’t understand broad Scots, so the monarch and nobility started using a plain English, which trickled down through the aristocracy and wealthy people, leaving only the lower classes speaking Scots,” Dick said.

“Now, hundreds of years later, we still have that divide.”

The UK has one of the highest densities of languages, accents and dialects in the English-speaking world, but while there may be “little pockets of localisms”, Dick said there is also “a homogenous level in the middle where we all come together”.

She continued: “With Scotland, we’re in a space where a lot of the time we’re leaving our personality at home. We’ve taken all of these influences from different cultures that also utilise the English language and left our own behind. Everybody’s doing a wee bit of a performance to meet in the middle.

“It’d be nicer if we connected on a deeper level, on something much more personal and far more rooted in our shared culture and heritage.”

Dick said she hoped to help people connect with each other through the distribution of the film.

She has organised a crowdfunder for the project, with a £10,000 goal going towards finishing filming, post-production, and organising screenings at community spaces.

The idea of community screenings was inspired by Dick’s time as a student volunteering at Glasgow Film, where she helped organise screenings in spaces where films are not typically shown, such as in community centres and supermarkets.

Dick told the Sunday National: “I did an event for a film called The Miners’ Hymns. We went into an old bowling hall, a woman came down who knew all the old mining songs from the 1970s and 1980s, and she sang them a cappella. Everyone in the room sang along with her and had tears in their eyes.

“The local brass band even came and played for free. They said, ‘This means so much to us, this is our life’.”

Dick continued: “This is the whole point in doing it – you need to connect with the people who have actually lived this experience. This is who it’s for. So I thought, let’s take it to them and make sure they get to see it and get to have that experience together.”

Dick said she had “loved” seeing the response to the project so far.

“This is a side of cinema that I’ve not really experienced before,” she told the Sunday National.

“The projects I’ve worked on, they get commissioned, you make them, they go to the cinema or a film festival, and then you find out how people feel about it,” she said.

“But this is a whole new level where, at the start of the project, I’m getting all this excitement and engagement from people who are sharing their own experiences as well.

“Every story that comes my way inspires me in some way; it has genuinely been so lovely – and it’s the whole point of making it.”

Click here to see the crowdfunder and to stay up to date on the progress of the project.

Why I’m making a new documentary celebrating Scots language

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