Why we decided to make the award-winning Scotsman Sessions – Scotsman comment

The primary purpose of the media is to report the news, to give the public the facts without fear or favour. However, there is a bit more to it than that.
There are now more than 150 Scotsman SessionsThere are now more than 150 Scotsman Sessions
There are now more than 150 Scotsman Sessions

The Scotsman is also part of Scottish society and has been for more than 200 years.

And so, when the coronavirus outbreak hit this country in March, forcing the cancellation of live performances on music and theatre, we felt we needed to do something to try to fill the gap left in the lives of performers and their audiences.

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The result was The Scotsman Sessions, videos recorded by musicians, actors, comedians, dancers, poets and others, and published on scotsman.com. The first four went live on March 20 and since then the collection has grown to more than 150. They are testimony to the extraordinary talents of artists from all over Scotland.

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Watch the award-winning Scotsman Sessions

Now the project has won the Innovation of the Year prize at the British Journalism Awards – beating entries by the BBC, the Financial Times, the Telegraph, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the multimedia messaging app Snapchat – with the judges praising it as a “different, warm and appropriate” response to the pandemic.

We have tried to do what we can to help support artists during these troubled times, to connect them with new audiences and to lift the mood of people stuck at home because we are all part of the same society.

We are unashamedly proud of The Scotsman Sessions and the artists involved should be doubly so. We recommend you give them a try, there will almost certainly be something that will make your day.

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