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Our Hosts and Champions project will be supporting Team Scotland's celebration of its proud sporting heritage throughout 2019 at events and on social media. Find out more at Celebrating our past, building our future.
Hosts and Champions: Scotland in the Commonwealth Games is a touring exhibition celebrating over 80 years of participation and achievement by Scotland in the Commonwealth Games from its origin as the British Empire Games held in Hamilton, Canada in 1930, through to the Gold Coast 2018 Games. Drawn from the Commonwealth Games Scotland Archive and associated collections held by the University of Stirling, the exhibition displays a selection of photographs, designs, clothing, papers and artefacts which evoke a rich story of Scotland's involvement in the Games, including as hosts in 1970, 1986 and 2014.
Developed with the support of Legacy 2014 and Commonwealth Games Scotland the exhibition has toured Scotland since March 2015, visiting venues in towns across the country including Irvine, Carnoustie, Perth, Stirling, Dalkeith, Dumfries, Stranraer, Kirkintilloch, Grangemouth and Lerwick in the Shetland Islands. In 2018 the exhibition visited Hawick, Coldstream and Glasgow. Further details of dates and venues will continue to be added to this webpage as the tour progresses.
Aussie Hosts and Tartan Champions, a specially curated exhibition of material relating to Team Scotland's experiences competing in Australia, was also displayed in Scotland House, Surfers Paradise, during the 2018 Gold Coast Games.
This exhibition was created by Professor Richard Haynes, Karl Magee, Ian Mackintosh and Jocelyn Grant and supported by Legacy 2014. It builds on the exhibition created in collaboration with Lucy Armitage (Glasgow Museums) and supported by the Celebrate Fund and Festival 2014 which was displayed in the Old Fruitmarket in Glasgow during the 2014 Games.
The University of Stirling's Archives & Special Collections holds the archives of Commonwealth Games Scotland, the body responsible for selecting, preparing and managing Scotland’s teams at the Commonwealth Games. The collection documents over 80 years of international sporting competition beginning with the formation of the first Scottish team in 1930.
As part of the Culture 2014 celebrations accompanying Glasgow 2014 our Hosts and Champions project opened up the archives to tell the story of Scotland’s contribution to the Commonwealth Games from the 1930s to the present day. Material from the collection was displayed in exhibitions in Stirling and Glasgow; a series of talks on the history of sport in Scotland provided further insights into Scotland’s sporting history; and the fascinating stories discovered in the archives by our project team were presented on our Sport Heritage blog. A finalist at the 2015 Herald Higher Education Awards, the Hosts and Champions exhibition continues to visit venues across Scotland celebrating Scotland's sporting heritage. To date it has visited the following locations:
Trinity Church, Irvine (13 March - 17 April 2015) - images of the exhbition in Irvine can be viewed here.
Carnoustie Library (21 April - 21 May 2015) - images of the exhibition in Carnoustie can be viewed here.
Dewars Centre, Perth (27 May - 27 June 2015) - images of the exhibition in Perth can be viewed here.
Macrobert Centre, University of Stirling (24 July - 14 September 2015) - images of the exhibiton can be viewed here.
Dalkeith Arts Centre (18 September - 23 October 2015) - images of the exhibition in Dalkeith can be viewed here.
Dumfries Museum (31 October - 12 December 2015) - a video about the exhibition in Dumfries can be viewed here.
Stranraer Museum (23 January - 27 February 2016)
Auld Kirk Museum, Kirkintilloch (5 March - 21 April 2016) - images of the exhibition in Kirkintilloch can be viewed here.
The Devil's Porridge Museum, Eastriggs (28 April - 4 June 2016)
Grangemouth Stadium (16 November - 12 December 2016)
University of Stirling Library (16 February - 1 March 2017)
Scottish Government, Victoria Quay, Edinburgh (27 March - 7 April 2017)
Islesburgh Community Centre, Lerwick, Shetland (2-21 September 2017)
Hawick Museum (29 March - 13 May 2018)
Coldstream Museum (17 May - 2 July 2018)
Scottish Football Museum, Hampden Park, Glasgow (25 July - 17 September 2018)
Further information about the project can be found on our University Archives blog and images from the archive can be viewed on our flickr pages.
Presentations and talks:
Pass it on! Celebrating Scotland's sporting heritage conference, University of Stirling, 24 February 2017
'Opening up the Commonwealth Games Scotland Archive', British Society of Sports History Annual Conference, Edinburgh 3 September 2016
Audience Engagement training day, Archives & Records Association Scotland, Inverness, 22 April 2016
Why does sporting heritage matter?, 2016 Sport in Museums Network conference, Nottingham, 11 February 2016
'In a league of their own': archives of the history of British sport and physical recreation, 2015 British Records Association conference - London, 26 November 2015
Aussie Hosts and Tartan Champions was a display specially created for Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games. It looked at Scotland's experiences competing at the Commonwealth Games in Australia in Sydney (1938), Perth (1962), Brisbane (1982) and Melbourne (2006). It was curated by Richard Haynes, Karl Magee and Ian Mackintosh (University of Stirling) and generously supported by Commonwealth Games Scotland and the University of Stirling. You can read more about the project on our Archives Blog:
The Hosts & Champions exhibition is available to display in cultural and sporting venues across Scotland. If you are interested in bringing the display to your venue please contact us at archives@stir.ac.uk
Follow us on twitter to get up-to-date news and information relating to the touring programme for Hosts & Champions and share your photographs of your visit to the exhibition using #HostsandChampions.
Sport Heritage: From Sporting Past to Future Wellbeing
Find out more about the fascinating stories contained in the Commonwealth Games Archive on our blog
