Dr Sarah Mackay and Dr Emily Munro, returning guest bloggers, share their forthcoming exhibition at the National Library of Scotland, researching the nation’s relationship with wet weather.

Rain follows on from Sarah’s AHRC-RLUK Professional Practice Fellowship ‘Communicating the Climate Crisis: Improving climate literacy through the National Library of Scotland’s collections’. The topic also aligns with Emily’s research interests in climate change and the environment, which she has previously explored through Living Proof: A Climate Story (produced in 2021 at National Library of Scotland), and other writing and film projects.

When people think of Scotland, they often think of rain. Scots, in turn, have had a lot to say about rain over the years. A relationship with wet weather is deeply woven into Scottish culture, economy, landscape and, ultimately, national identity. The new exhibition explores these multifaceted connections through the National Library of Scotland collections, from scientists’ efforts to understand and forecast rain, to the authors and artists who have been inspired by weather.

A selection of recent acquisitions relating to climate change. Credit National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh.

The exhibition is ambitious in its scope and items selected for display span poetry, literature, music, moving image, sound, science and climate-related material, maps and a host of interactive activities for people to explore their own relationship to rain. As a result of this wide-ranging remit, Rain was co-curated by three National Library curators with different specialisms: Sarah Mackay (Published Collections), Emily Munro (Moving Image and Sound) and Rachel Beattie (Archives and Manuscripts). Some of our star items include 18th-century Scottish scientist James Hutton’s ‘Theory of Rain’; an original 1952 press book from the iconic film Singin’ in the Rain; and a vintage map of Scotland’s whisky distilleries, complete with tartan trim.

From the archives, there’s also a handwritten 19th-century recipe book which features a recipe for waterproofing clothes, with the author, Katherine Jane Ellice, declaring that umbrellas ‘in windy weather, are worse than useless!’. Archive footage chosen for the exhibition includes the lyrical film Raindrop (1975) directed by Edward McConnell, which follows the journey of a raindrop ‘from dripping leaf to rushing stream’ with stunning photography and experimental music.

Rainy vocabulary appears throughout the gallery in Scotland’s three official national languages (English, Gaelic and Scots) and visitors will have a chance to add their own weather words to a collaborative artwork within the space. Children from Raasay Primary School, on the Isle of Raasay in the Inner Hebrides, have contributed an artwork featuring words and idioms for ‘rain’ in Gaelic.

James Hutton’s ‘Theory of Rain’, published in Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1788). Credit National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh.

Rain can be considered as a form of intangible heritage, shared by people around the world and experienced and interpreted in different ways. The ways in which rain materialises itself through culture is explored in Experiences of Rain, a sound art piece co-created by a group of artists in Glasgow who have lived experience of migration. The sound piece, which is installed in the exhibition and also available online, incorporates song, verse, myths, memories and commentary around the meaning of rain.

With our exhibition, we hope to show how rain is not only a rich field for research, but connection across cultures and belief systems, bridging geographical and linguistic differences.

Rain is at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh from 19 June 2026. Experiences of Rain was part-funded by Scotland’s Green Libraries grant fund, an initiative to encourage sustainability in libraries and public interest in the environment, administered by CILIPS and supported by Better World Books.

Sarah Mackay (nee Thomson) is a Curator at the National Library of Scotland (NLS) in Edinburgh. She completed her SGSAH-funded PhD in History at the University of Edinburgh in 2023, and was an AHRC-RLUK Professional Practice Fellow at the NLS (2023-2025). 

Emily Munro is a Curator at the National Library of Scotland, a writer, and filmmaker. She has a PhD in Film Studies from University of Glasgow.