Folk music as ecosophy: culture, space and place

This session will lead participants to engage with folk music through listening and participating in a penny whistle workshop. We will share how this approach has been used in Scotland to explore the effects of post- industrialisation and to reconcile the changes brought about by this to a place, its people and society. In turn we will consider how music-making is relevant to Ecosophy – that is the complex ways in which humans make sense of the interconnections between ecology, the environment, and social relations. We will consider how this approach may be relevant to the Arctic region; and raise this provocation with the performance of a folk song that charts the voyage of Scottish seafarers who set sail on a northerly passage aboard whaling vessels in the nineteenth century.