On St Andrews Day, Scotland took a moment to recognise some of the achievements of inspirational young people. I was privileged enough to have been invited to both the dinner and the ceremony alongside Wiktoria and what a night it was!
We were treated to a brilliant 3 course meal which was preceded by Ian Stirling excellently opening the event, along with a poem wrote by 7 of Scotland’s young people and they were assisted in writing it by Scottish Makar (A makar is a term from Scottish literature for a poet or bard, often thought of as a royal court poet.) Jackie Kay.
In the SEC Centre, the people sat at my table even got to meet the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon.
And Wiktoria caught up with the First Minister too!
At the dinner I caught up with Finalist in the sports category Vikki Allan who said:
“The Young Scot Awards was a fantastic evening, I cried, I laughed but most importantly was just in awe at our wonderful young people across Scotland. I felt that whole event was organised fantastically to really show off our young people, so well done to all involved. Congratulations to all of the finalists and to the winners, every little thing we are doing is making Scotland a better and more inclusive place for the future.”
We then moved through to the Clyde Auditorium, more commonly known as the SEC Armadillo, for the main ceremony. Although, before the ceremony started we had the arduous task of recording a laughter and applause track for STV! Then, once that was concluded, the ceremony could begin.
Ian Stirling again kicked us off and led us through all the awards. The audience shared a laugh, and a tear as we heard the stories of the nominees and some of them tugged at your heart strings, but they all were truly inspirational!
I managed to catch up with YOYP Champion of the Year Rachael Tidmore who said:
“The awards for me was both a fantastic experience and opportunity. Haven been part of the delivery panel to codesign the awards seeing everything brought together on the night was great and to see everyone having and enjoying the evening was even better. Being a finalist was very humbling, I never expected even to have been nominated. I loved the ceremony listening to some amazing and inspiring stories of the other finalists and being recognized for their hard work and contributions. Coming to my award I was almost certain one of the boys had won, so to have been announced as the winner was completely overwhelming. Going onto stage to receive the award I had no idea what I was going to say but in my mind I wanted make sure every young person in that hall finalist, winner or not that they are a champion to someone and even to themselves and that’s what YOYP2018 has been about and I hope I got that across when I spoke. It was over all it was a fantastic night one which I was very grateful for.”
Finally, the evening was rounded out by former ‘The Wanted’ member Max George who performed some of his hits including “Barcelona”.
So, all round a brilliant ceremony and it was well enjoyed by all who attended. I even managed to nab a selfie with Judy Murray in the Armadillo concourse!
