Taynuilt Donald Shaw joins RSE

Argyll musician Donald Shaw, a founder of the group Capercaillie, is one of 80 Fellows elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) this year from across the sciences, arts, education, business, and public life, writes Sandy Neil.

Brought up in Taynuilt, steeped in Gaelic song and traditional music, Donald was involved in all styles of music from an early age. Originally taught the accordion by his father, at 16 he won the All-Britain Accordion Championship. A year later, whilst still at Oban High School, he co-founded Capercaillie, with whom he still writes and performs.

Donald, artistic director of the Celtic Connections music festival, joins around 1,700 Fellows at the RSE, who are ‘recognised as being some of the greatest thinkers, researchers and practitioners working in or with Scotland today’.

His mum Libby Shaw, who lives in Lochawe, was ‘bursting with pride’.

She recalled: ‘He started playing his father’s accordion, but it was too big for him. He was 16 when he started Capercaillie. None of them had passed their driving test. I was driving them everywhere.

‘It is very difficult to go into music professionally. But he did it. He is an example for what you can do. He has worked so hard. He has done so much. I am really proud of all my children.’

This year the singer-songwriter and activist Dr Annie Lennox, Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University, received an Honorary Fellowship. She is the founder of The Circle: a non-profit organisation of women working together to achieve equality for women and girls in a fairer world.

Among the others appointed to the Fellowship are Mark

Logan, the former Skyscanner chief operating officer, and Professor Marc Turner of the University of Edinburgh, the director at the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service.

Theresa Shearer, CEO of ENABLE Group, has also joined the 2022 Fellows intake. She has led a national campaign to deliver the Living Wage to social care employees, is a commissioner on the UK Law Family Commission on Civil Society, and is the vice president of Inclusion Europe, advocating to end segregation and institutionalisation of disabled people.

‘This year’s cohort represents the diversity of expertise within Scotland and the UK,’ the RSE said. ‘With a more diverse Fellowship, the RSE hopes to make even more of an impact across its policy, research and engagement work which seeks to address the key contemporary issues of the day.’