Rip It Up: Future Features

“The National Museum of Scotland is the most popular visitor attraction in Scotland,” Lee McCulley, the museum’s Adult Learning Officer tells us. “Although a large number of 17-24 year olds visit, only 7% of visitors to our paid exhibitions fall within that age group. With Rip It Up, we want to change that.”

Rip It Up: The Story of Scottish Pop is all about... well, um, telling the story of Scottish pop. Part of the story the National Museum of Scotland want to tell is one that’s in the making right now, so they've teamed up with some of the students from the School of Arts and Creative Industries at Edinburgh Napier University to create a campaign to appeal to a 17-24 year old audience. The students created Future Features, looking at four up-and-coming young talented artists – SKJØR, Dancing On Tables, Gus Harrower and Anna McLuckie – currently plugging away in Scotland’s vibrant music scene.

“We had an existing relationship with Napier – and they are experienced in work-based learning – so progressing this was straightforward,” McCulley says. “The tutors recruited students from relevant courses to create an ‘interdisciplinary agency’ [and] it’s fair to say that, from the beginning, we were so impressed by the students' approach... Sometimes projects can begin really positively but peter out a little. This was never like that. The students’ confidence and commitment was apparent straightaway. They each had their own specialisms and came across as respectful to each other in terms of what everyone brought to the table. I’ve really enjoyed this process, it’s been great.”

As well as McCulley, we speak to Joanne Frier, one of the students who has been working on the Future Features project at Napier. “This has been an amazing opportunity for us as final year students to work on a campaign that will actually be produced and have tangible results,” she tells us. “While the exhibition is all about the past 50 years of Scottish pop music, our Future Features campaign focuses on the musicians that we believe will be the future of Scottish pop music.”

The artists being given the spotlight by Edinburgh Napier University are already starting to make waves in the Scottish music scene: Edinburgh four-piece SKJØR, fronted by the immense talent of Louise McCraw gained slots at the likes of Electric Fields and Belladrum Tartan Hearts Festival last year, recorded a BBC Introducing live session for Vic Galloway and were on Jim Gellatly’s emerging Scottish acts to watch out for in 2018 list. Similarly, Dunfermline’s catchy indie-pop five-piece Dancing On Tables appeared on that same list and are set to have a busy 2018 following their appearance at The Great Escape in Brighton in May, with slots at XpoNorth, Belladrum and Latitude already confirmed.

Two further Edinburgh artists are involved with Future Features including singer-songwriter Gus Harrower, who like Dancing On Tables is also set to play XpoNorth this summer in Inverness. In 2015, Harrower won the Holyrood Rocks competition; he then went on to win the Song Academy's Young Songwriter award in 2016 and was nominated for best acoustic act at the 2017 Scottish Alternative Music Awards. Completing the line-up is the incredibly talented and quite unique Anna McLuckie, whose name you might already know as she appeared on 2014’s series of The Voice where she performed an original cover of Daft Punk’s Get Lucky on the harp, giving pop a folk twist. Influenced by the likes of Laura Marling, Karine Polwart and Dry the River, McLuckie has been quietly plugging away with her bandmates and released gorgeous five-track EP Dear towards the end of last year.

“The artists chosen already have a following of fans that we hope will engage with our campaign for Rip It Up.” Frier explains, “The campaign showcases the artists performing in various locations across the museum, which will be available to view as full videos on the National Museums Scotland website, or through shorter clips on social media. A series of posters featuring each of the artists in the museum will also be distributed in a range of locations around Edinburgh. By further exposing the bands across various channels throughout the Future Features campaign, we hope to boost awareness of the music our talented artists are creating.”

“This project was to be by young people, for young people,” McCulley tells us. “I’m so pleased with the results, these bands were great choices… For the museum, it has ensured that we’ve also looked to the future, as well as the past.”