Patti Smith and King Creosote perform ‘Pauper’s Dough’ from Professor Virginia Heath’s film ‘From Scotland With Love’ at COP 26 Climate Action Concert

Patti Smith and King Creosote perform Pauper’s Dough from Professor Virginia Heath’s film From Scotland With Love at COP 26 Climate Action Concert Pathway to Paris in Glasgow 2021

On 31 October 2021, to mark the beginning of the COP 26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Patti Smith invited King Creosote to perform with her and they sang Pauper’s Dough, the original song from the protest sequence in From Scotland With Love at the magnificent Theatre Royal in Glasgow. The Pathway to Paris concert was a call from musicians, artists and activists for urgent action on climate change.

Hearing Patti Smith sing together with King Creosote, exhorting the audience to ‘Rise above the gutter you have inside’ in her powerful and inimitable style was a very stirring and uplifting moment. You can see a short clip here on Vimeo and also from the full livestream concert recording (at 2:39:00 on the timeline).

“Kenny Anderson (King Creosote) is an independent singer-songwriter from Fife, Scotland… His collaborative album Diamond Mine with Jon Hopkins was shortlisted for the 2011 Mercury Music prize, but of late, it’s King Creosote’s live soundtrack to Virginia Heath’s film From Scotland with Love that threatens to fill the auditoriums.”

– Quote from the Pathway to Paris brochure that accompanied the evening’s performance.

Pathway to Paris brings together musicians, artists, activists, academics, mayors, and innovators to help raise consciousness surrounding the urgency of climate action and offers solutions to turning the Paris Agreement into action. 

Made entirely of Scottish film archive, From Scotland With Love is a 75-minute film by award-winning Director and Sheffield Hallam University Professor of Film Virginia Heath with a transcendent score by Scottish musician and composer King Creosote.

A journey into our collective past, the film explores universal themes of love, loss, resistance, migration, work and play. Ordinary people, some long since dead, their names and identities largely forgotten, appear shimmering from the depth of the vaults to take a starring role.

Virginia Heath is Professor of Film in the Art and Design Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University. She is a multi-award winning writer/director with New Zealand and UK nationality. She directs documentary and drama films including the acclaimed, BAFTA nominated, From Scotland With Love and Berlinale award winning Relativity.