Our regular programme of talks has gone online whilst our galleries are closed, and activities restricted.

Our short lockdown talks have responded to the theme of who or what makes a hero. 2020 marks the bicentenary of the Scottish Radical Rising, cultural activities across Scotland were planned to commemorate the anniversary. Author Maggie Craig’s new history of the rising, One Week in April was published earlier this year.

In her talk Scotland’s Forgotten Heroes, Maggie retells the story of the extraordinary week at the beginning of April 1820 when weavers and workers in towns and villages across Central Scotland and Ayrshire went on strike and demonstrated for universal male suffrage and repeal of the Corn laws. The Radical Rising was part of growing unrest throughout Britain in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. The National Galleries of Scotland has one anonymous portrait of weaver and radical reformer, James Purlie Wilson in the collection. He was arrested and along with nineteen others, was found guilty and sentenced to death.