Fears that Robert Burns has been sidelined in celebrations for his own 250th birthday
By Edd McCracken Arts Correspondent

When a firmament of Scottish stars raise their drams and address the haggis in Alloway on January 25 next year, it will mark the start of Homecoming Scotland 2009, the official year-long celebration of the nation's greatest exports: whisky, golf, ideas, heritage and Robert Burns.

The year, date and location of the supper put the bard to the fore. It will be Burns' 250th birthday and it's hoped the likes of Sir Sean Connery will be on hand to toast the lassies.

Homecoming 2009 may have started life centred around the national poet, but disquiet has grown among custodians of his legacy that Burns may be sidelined in a year that was initially designed to celebrate him.

One leading Burns figure has accused Homecoming of "mishandling" Burns, several Burns-related projects have been denied Homecoming funding and the biggest Burns event of the year won't even be part of the official celebrations.

Announced in November 2005, Homecoming Scotland's scope is ambitious. The programme has been given more than £10 million to tap into the 50 million people around the world claiming Scottish ancestry and entice them home' with special events based around the "five pillars" of Homecoming: Burns, golf, whisky, genealogy and the Enlightenment.

Events under the Homecoming banner will include the British Open golf championship at Turnberry. The full events programme will be revealed on June 16.

Dr Gerry Carruthers, director of the Centre for Robert Burns Studies at Glasgow University, is planning a three-day conference for January to celebrate the bard. It will feature several hundred delegates from around the world, include comedy, folk sessions and a specially-commissioned piece of music by James MacMillan based on Burns' lyrics and performed by Scottish singers. "It will be quite a premiere," he said.

Carruthers says it will be the biggest single Burns event in 2009 and, much to his chagrin, none of it will be funded by Homecoming Scotland. "I have quite a bit of beef about this," he said.

He was told in late January that he could apply for funding. Carruthers said the window was "too ridiculously short" to get his application in.

"Yet again Scotland mishandles Burns," he said. "It's like 1996, the bicentenary of Burns' death. There was a whole load of mishandling then. And not much more foresight has been applied again. I'm quite annoyed that there was no genuine opportunity for us to apply for funding, given the kind of event we've got."

While he said he was "delighted" that Burns was one of the Homecoming themes, Carruthers doubted whether the bard would be used in a suitable way.

"There's a bit of opportunism, and I don't object to opportunism as long as it is done with skill," he said. "And I'm not absolutely convinced that this has been skilful opportunism."

Tourism chiefs hope their timely enterprise will create a £40m boost for the economy and attract 15 million visitors. Ex-pats such as racing driver Dario Franchitti has been signed up to take part in the "I'm Coming Home in 2009" campaign, which will begin this year.

But Carruthers isn't the only one who believes Burns is being lost.

"I just feel that the emphasis was so strongly about delivering a tourist outcome, to how many tourist bed nights your programme would result in, they lost the chance to do something more imaginative," said Robyn Marsack, director of the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh.

Marsack put a bid in to Homecoming for money to create a project exploring Burns' relationship with agriculture.

"We wanted to do something not tied up with Burns societies and suppers, but the things that he touches upon, notions of brotherhood and man's relationship with the land," she said.

Marsack said initial conversations with Homecoming were positive, but she received her refusal letter last month. The project will still go ahead, albeit in a smaller form.

"If I see it's the same old things with some dressed-up editions for this year, then I shall be very disappointed," she said.

Homecoming Scotland has had a troubled history. When former culture minister Patricia Ferguson announced the initiative in November 2005, responsibility was handed to an Ayr-based team. But by November last year the alarm was raised that it may not be ready, so the new administration handed control to EventScotland.

It was then that literary events lost out, according to Donald Smith, director of the Scottish Storytelling Centre.

"We started with a Burns idea and thought, we can make more of this," he said. "But because the wider thinking has gone through all these ups and downs, have we ended up missing out on the Burns thing? Is that still coherent within all this? And I think the general feeling about this is no.

"You want it to be a success. The risk is that it will fall between about five pillars. One had to look creatively for a way to package the Burns thing into one big mix, combining the quality literary and the popular aspects. As Burns does. Maybe we could learn a few lessons from him."

The Homecoming Scotland team stressed that the bard is at the centre of its plans for 2009.

A spokesman said: "Robert Burns is the inspiration behind Homecoming Scotland 2009. Two thousand and nine is the 250th anniversary of Burns' birth, and the influence of our national poet's life and work will be central in the year- long celebration."

He defended the application process for funding. "This fund was launched in early November 2007 as the Homecoming Scotland project moved from inception to delivery phase, with event organisers invited to submit applications by the end of February - a planning period of three and a half months," he said.

Confirmed Burns-related Homecoming Events are hard to find ahead of the launch in two weeks' time. But the National Library of Scotland, which holds an edition of the Kilmarnock Burns, is planning a major exhibition that will run from St Andrews Day until Burns Night 2009 in Edinburgh before touring the country.

One literary event that potentially has received funding is Stanza, Scotland's poetry festival based in St Andrews. Its director Brian Johnstone remained tight-lipped over whether the festival would be under the Homecoming banner.

"Homecoming is an extremely interesting idea," he said. "And Burns is a very interesting nail to hang it on."

The National Trust For Scotland is on the cusp of taking over several of the major Burns properties around Alloway. If its application to the Heritage Lottery Fund is successful NTS will be in charge of the Burns Cottage, Burns Monument, Brig o'Doon, the Auld Kirk and the birthplace museum, and at a stroke become a major stakeholder in Burns' legacy.

Negotiations are ongoing as to whether the NTS will be part of Homecoming.

A spokeswoman said: "If Heritage Lottery funding is forthcoming this summer, we will begin work on a series of Burns-related projects, including a careful reinterpretation of the cottage where Burns was born in Alloway. This will be in place for January 25, 2009."

But it appears that most of the Burns celebrations will be organised by volunteers with no public funding.

Many of these will be organised by the Robert Burns Federation, which oversees nearly 400 Burns societies world wide.

"After Homecoming has gone the Robert Burns Federation will continue to promote Burns, as it has done since 1885," said Shirley Bell, its chief executive. "I'm not taking anything away from Homecoming, and I applaud the initiative, but I don't want people to forget about Burns when 2009 is gone."