At the heart of how we think about folk culture in Scotland, I feel, is the ideal of participation: a sense that anyone can take part, and of activities that are inclusive and open to all. In this sense, folk culture in Scotland seems largely driven by what the Welsh political writer and author Raymond Williams called the ‘collective idea’: a way of seeing our lives and relations to others that is fundamentally different to the way that capitalism teaches us to look at ourselves as individuals, separated off from each other, each out for ourselves. Williams wrote that this focus on the individual “can be sharply contrasted with the idea that we properly associate with the working class: an idea which … regards society neither as neutral or protective, but as the positive means for all kind of development, including individual development.” For Williams, it was this sense of the many connections of communal living, which he saw as a strong characteristic of working class life, that provided a compelling alternative to the isolation and self-interest he saw within neoliberalism.