We have partnered with National Library of Scotland and advocacy group Who Cares? Scotland on a three-year project to gather oral histories from the care experienced community.

At least 100 care experienced people will have their voices heard and their stories told, and all stories will be held in the national collections at the National Library of Scotland in perpetuity. Caring Scotland will also culminate in a touring immersive installation and accompanying exhibition in 2026.

The project is artistically led by acclaimed playwright Nicola McCartney, a passionate advocate for care experienced people. McCartney has in-depth knowledge of Scotland’s care system, having spent 16 years as a foster carer. During that time, she looked after several children and young people. She also served as a volunteer on the Children’s Panel – who make legal decisions with and for children and young people.

But her day job is a writer: McCartney has spent the past 30 years working as a professional playwright, director, screenwriter and dramaturg.

It was through her work as a writer that McCartney became a foster carer. In the early 00s she suffered what she called “quite a big mental health breakdown”.

“I started very young in this profession,” she added. “And I got a lot of opportunities very quickly. Within the space of a couple of years I was writing The Bill, I was writing for the Channel 4 company Tiger Aspect, I had a National Theatre in London commission, an Abbey Theatre in Dublin commission – I had all these commissions from everyone. I was working in television and film and stage and running my own theatre company, which I was still directing. And I couldn’t say no to anything.

"I have a fair amount of baggage in my own childhood and background as well. All of that just accumulated and I just couldn’t cope with the intensity... I felt very out of my depth.”

When McCartney returned to work after a year’s hiatus, everything picked up again as before. She churned out successful plays including Lifeboat – which today is still one of the most widely produced children’s plays from Scotland – and was encouraged by people in the industry to keep on the treadmill, “keeping your name up there and doing as much as you can do, just climbing and climbing”. But something was missing. To McCartney, everything felt “a bit empty”. She felt she wasn’t making a difference – something that had driven her theatre work so far.

Taking Class Act – the Traverse Theatre’s flagship educational programme which McCartney worked on since 1997– to Russia in 2004 changed everything. Alongside playwright Douglas Maxwell, she travelled back and forth to Russia for a number of years, working with a mix of young people and children in shelter – what they locally called an orphanage – as well as young people from mainstream school.

Within a few years, McCartney was considering adopting one of these young people and was encouraged to adopt a particularly talented 14-year-old by the head of the orphanage, who told her: “You know, her lifespan is going to be really low. Girls graduating from the care system here are usually dead by the time they’re 25”.

They didn’t initially tell the young person in case there were any setbacks and got the adoption process under way. Meanwhile, as a means of preparation, McCartney signed up as a foster carer for Glasgow City Council, initially taking children and young people on a part-time or respite basis.

The adoption never materialised owing to the prolonged process, but she continued fostering: “By then I was in”.

McCartney’s work and life experience led to her development of Holding/Holding On, a film produced by the National Theatre of Scotland during the pandemic lockdowns.

McCartney interviewed care experienced people, social workers and others who worked in the care system. Using ‘active listening’ (“it’s dead simple, which is that you just actually listen to people”), McCartney told their stories back to them, recorded their stories and used elements of their stories (verbatim) for the scripted production.

McCartney honed this technique in various settings: at a recovery centre for women leaving the criminal justice system in the US (who were so traumatised their memories were “incredibly fragmented”) and more recently with a man – Dritan Kastrati – who arrived in the UK as an unaccompanied child refugee, smuggled by the mafia across Europe when he was just 11. This involved years of one-to-one work with Kastrati, actively listening to his stories, repeating them back to him and piecing his life together “like doing a big jigsaw”. That process resulted in the play How Not to Drown, which toured the UK.

Using playwrighting theory – exploring conflict and other barriers to a protagonist’s story progression – McCartney helps individuals to unlock their stories. In many cases, she says this helps them to change “the story they tell themselves about themselves”.

“By taking a step back and thinking about themselves as a character, they get that distance to go, ‘maybe actually that wasn’t my fault, maybe I couldn’t have controlled that’, ‘perhaps I could have chosen differently there’,” she said. “Somehow it just seems to help people [integrate]. The story we tell ourselves about ourselves is the most important story. So when someone’s been through a difficult period of their lives – when any of us do – that affects the story we’re telling ourselves about ourselves in our own head, and for me that’s the key thing.”

A team of “six brilliant artists who’ve all done really amazing work in different applied settings will spend up to three hours with each person who wants to share their story”, McCartney explained.

The artists will practice active listening and relay participants’ stories back to them. Participants will also receive a transcript. Once all of the stories have been gathered, the artists will identify themes and elements of the stories they may wish to use for a body of work that is described at the moment as an immersive installation.

McCartney is resolute as to why this work is so important, saying: “In the case of care experienced people, they’re not in control of their own stories... your story is in the possession of the state. So when a system interferes with your life story, your own narrative, identity – and for me that’s a really important part of the practice – it is about helping to support people to take control back over the narrative about themselves, the story they are telling themselves about themselves.

“People don’t have to talk about their experience in care. They can talk about everything they’ve done since. They can talk about themselves as a parent.

“We’re not mining for people’s pain. I never do. That will naturally come out if people want to tell us... we’re looking for joy and we’re looking for success.”

Further information on Caring Scotland can be found here.

Specific information on how to get involved in the project can be found here.

A version of this article appeared in the National Library of Scotland’s Discover Magazine – which can be viewed here.

Caring Scotland is delivered by National Theatre of Scotland in partnership with Who Cares? Scotland and the National Library of Scotland, funded with an award from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Caring Scotland is also supported by Scottish partners; Dundee Rep Theatre, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow and Aberdeen Performing Arts alongside local authority social work departments with whom the theatres already have positive existing connections.