20 years ago - my Ulster-Scots Agency invitation

20 years ago today I was invited to consider becoming the “post Lord Laird” chair of the Ulster-Scots Agency. A senior NIO official came to the boardroom of my workplace, GCAS, and we talked for nearly two hours.

Many people told me to not take the role. But I did accept it, and did what I could for a four year term, from June 2005 - June 2009, squeezed in around my day job and family and all sorts of "real life" stuff.

I didn't get paid for doing it, the few hundred pounds a month for the role was paid directly to GCAS for the inconvenience. Some people from those years are still friends and I thank them all for working with me, and together we did some positive things. But nowhere near enough.

Ireland is an island of cultural variety. Some are still struggling to accept that.

I will always believe that rooted, authentic, community-led heritage and culture is of critical importance to us all.

Without culture, we’re all just consumers or constituents, pawns in the bigger game of finance and politics. We are all more than what we buy, and how we vote.