Critic attacks corny images used to sell Homecoming

Published on Thursday 9 April 2009 21:34

AN ARCH-CRITIC of Scotland's Year of Homecoming has launched a new attack on how it is being promoted. Professor Tom Devine, one of Scotland's leading historians, has accused organisers of selling an outdated image of the nation.

The director of the Centre for Diaspora Studies at Edinburgh University said much of the marketing of Homecoming was out of step with modern Scotland and was aimed at wooing American tourists.

Ironically, Homecoming organisers have been criticised for spending too much money on the country's biggest promotional drive in Scotland itself at the expense of campaigns in the United States or Canada.

More than 300 events are being staged under the Homecoming banner, a 5.5 million initiative staged to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, until St Andrew's Day as part of a campaign targeting people around the world with some kind of "affinity" to Scotland.

Writing in an Edinburgh University magazine, Professor Devine said: "We have become more sophisticated and confident in our national identity over the last 20 or 30 years.

"The White Heather Club, Andy Stewart and Moira Anderson sit uncomfortably with the modern Scot. But what's being marketed by Homecoming now is very much an incarnation of that."

Prof Devine has also criticised Homecoming for failing properly to recognise huge parts of the world where Scots emigrated.