Shelagh McKay Jones

Singer/songwriter and guitarist (acoustic). In my youth I ran many musical, social, and personal development events for young people. 

In 2006, I became a science teacher however most of my teaching career was spent as a class teacher in Glenburn School, Greenock, which was a school for pupils with  moderate and complex learning difficulties. 

I worked from P1 to S6 teaching reading, writing, maths, personal, social and religious education, French, geography, ICT, and singing. 

This level of multitasking required excellent organisational skills.

I was also the school Health Promotion Officer for two years until I moved on from full-time teaching to concentrate on my music career. 

In 2015, I won a Danny Kyle Open Stage award at Celtic Connections where my song Who Dae Ye think Ye Are? achieved a standing ovation. I began running singing and songwriting workshops and founded SongWriters Uncovered Series. Soon after this my song This Sugar Is Not Sweet was selected to be professionally recorded by the Absent Voices project. 

After assisting James Grant with RIG Arts’ 2017/18 Broomhill Songs project for which I wrote the song Cauliflower and Magic Milk I went on to run online songwriting workshops for RIG Arts’ She Plays project during the 2020 lockdown and wrote four songs for their climate change project in 2021. 

In 2022,  I organised a group of ten singer songwriters in the co-writing of four songs for RIG Arts Lee Jeans Sit-In 40th Anniversary project, as well as leading a group of three  singer songwriters as the Musicians-in-Residence in  Greenock’s Dandelion Garden, ‘The Drying Green’, and taking four shows to the Edinburgh Fringe with PBHs Free Fringe.