HIGHLAND CULTURE
TAKE PRIDE, TAKE PART INVESTMENT PLAN
STORY STONES
CONTENTS
Lead organisation
Partner organisations
Proposal
Programme of work
Contribution to Growing Audiences, Highland Culture, “Take Pride Take Part” Strategy
Anticipated outcomes and long term impacts
The Need / Opportunity
Address equalities and inclusion
Partnership Potential Funding
Project Management
LEAD ORGANISATION
North Lands Creative Glass
Quatre Bras, Lybster
Caithness KW3 6BN
Website: www.northlandsglass.com
Email: info@northlandsglass.com
Tel 01593 721229
Company Limited by Guarantee, Registration No: 159007
Registered Scottish Charity No: SCO23805
PARTNER ORGANISATIONS
Timespan
Dunrobin Street, Helmsdale, KW8 6JA.
Charity SC009796, Company SC096873
Tel: 01431 821327www.timespan.org.uk
Caithness Horizons
Old Town Hall, High Street, Thurso, KW14 8AJ
Company No: 269929, Charity No: SC036061
Tel: 01847 896508
www.caithnesshorizons.co.uk
Moniack Mhor - Scotland's Creative Writing Centre
Teavarran, Kiltarlity, Inverness-shire, IV4 7HT
Tel: 01463 741675
www.moniackmhor.org.uk
Yarrows Heritage Trust
Scottish Charity Number SCO33188
www.yarrowsheritagetrust.co.uk
An Lanntair
Kenneth Street, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, HS1 2DS
Charity number SC003287
www.lanntair.com
Borgie Forest Cabin Trust
megtelfer@tiscali.co.uk
Room 13
The Hub, 30 Fassifern Road, Fort William PH33 6QX
www.room13international.org
Highland Youth Arts Hub
Fèis Rois Ltd, Suite 3, Dingwall Business Centre, Strathpeffer Road, Dingwall IV15 9QF
Tel: 01349 862600
ORGANISTION THAT WE ARE IN DISCUSSION WITH BUT NOT YET CONFIRMED
Dounreay Site restoration Ltd
Proposal
The telling of stories is perhaps one of the oldest of art forms in the world; it is a form in which Scotland has a particularly rich tradition. The Gaelic Seanchaidh, Viking Skald or Irish Ollamh are the holders of stories and of people and places, the words reflecting the communities that hold them.
The landscape can also speak and across Scotland there are many broken walls and crofts each with a tale to tell of lives lived, death, hope, despair and happiness.
The words have gone but the walls remain. The walls speak of change, of stories written and lost; the threads are broken but are being rewritten every day
The recent past, the present and future will see a change in the landscape and demographic of the Scottish Highlands, greater than at any time in its history. Windfarms both offshore and onshore, tidal power, the new approach to land use for forest, agriculture and tourism will completely alter the landscape. Interest in Scottish history and archaeology is growing as the case for an independent nation is argued and the need to validate a past which has a value beyond being part of a bigger nation.
It is a time of flux and the time to archive this is now. In 50 years’ time when the turbines have gone and there is a border crossing at Carlisle, people may wonder how this happened. Or likewise when the Highlands and the Pentland Firth are generating power for the whole nation, a record of the transition may be of interest.
It could even be the world imagined by Ross Sinclair.
This project would be a paradigm of now; the words of today speaking of the changing landscape, the attitudes, the ideas, hopes and perhaps fears for the future.
The words would be made real; cast into glass and given back into the communities they came from, built into the walls that first heard them.
Across counties, an unbroken prose of glass words returned back to the croft gables, the dry walled dykes and way markers in the landscape.
Programme of Work (how)
Information would be garnered through six residencies each five weeks long and spread across different communities throughout the Highlands.
The residencies would be based on a single artist with a brief to engage the whole community. Listening to children in the schools, talking to the residents of sheltered accommodation, recording the thoughts of the fishermen, of the farmers, of housewives, construction and oil workers and the unemployed. Collecting information / words / prose / sayings / ideas / thoughts of people and phrasing them into some type of poetic form or distilling the thoughts down to a representational group of phrases and sayings.
The residences would not be about an artist taking influence and creating a piece of work but of a creative person articulating the thoughts of that area
These would be fed back to North Lands Creative Glass, Lybster, where the words would be cast into or engraved onto glass stones.
Contributors from the various areas would be encouraged to come to Lybster to watch and be involved in workshops helping create the stones.
Exhibitions would be set up at the residency venues with the glass being built into stone walls for a concurrent exhibition across the Highlands.
Eventually all these parts would come together as a single venue installation.
Then the glass Story Stones would go back to where the words came from and back into the land.
On-line digital communication will be used as a resource and tool throughout the project through the use of a specific project website and Blog.
Contribution to Growing Audiences Highland Culture, “Take Pride Take Part” Strategy
The project is Highlands and Islands wide; it is multi venue with each venue being the focus of a residency for the collation of the words.
Each organisation knows its own area, is aware of the community it is part of and the community knows the venue. This will instil a sense of trust and place and by being part of the scheme people will become aware of the other greater community that is the Highlands.
Story Stones will aim to bring all the threads together and do so by using the most accessible of art form, words.
Many people are cautious about drawing, painting, dancing or sculpting but nearly everyone will talk. This project does not ask anyone to be an artist; just to be themselves and shows them that their words are as valid as any other. Eventually building a connecting wall between areas that will speak to the world and tells the story of what it means to be part of the Highlands of Scotland.
In time each community will have a sculpture that they can be proud of and identify with because without them it would not exist.
The stones would form markers on a pathway across the Highlands, not a sculpture trail but a single sculpture that spans the whole area.
Anticipated Outcomes and Long Term Impacts
We all work in a sense of isolation or at least of local knowledge, aware of immediate possibilities but perhaps with less understanding of what is over the hill and across the loch.
Often things are done at personal not at organisation level, so that when staff members leave, the relationship between groups can be lost. The most important outcome of this project would be this ad hoc relationship becomes more professional and permanent.
The ideal would be that the website and blog developed for this project would become a level of intranet communication for arts organisations across the Highlands and that the project itself begins a strong dialogue between arts venues.
For the Communities this underlying level of professionalism is possibly more important in the long-term than a piece of art work.
For the Highlands an extensive and inclusive project which results in a major representational piece of artwork to be seen in a main urban centre will advertise the breadth and diversity of the life in the area to a national and international audience
The Need / Opportunity
The Highland region is a wide spread community. It can often be seen as a whole mass of small communities rather than all being a part of a larger one. A project such as this would help develop a pride not only in their own sense of place but as part of a bigger world.
Over the past 3 years North Lands Creative Glass has been expanding its access programme. Our specialism is glass and while we do have an ability to do some other arts activities our efforts are often hampered by lack of knowledge and equipment. Better cross organisational communication would develop reciprocal arrangements allowing for broader access to more varied art forms and activities for all across the Highlands.
Address Equalities and Inclusion
By using words as the means of expression then the level of participation is open to all. The project does not ask for learned skills or even intense workshop participation. It is the responsibility of the resident artist to go where the words are.
By creating partnerships with organisations who already serve communities and groups then there is existent knowledge of an area, the people and how and where to connect with them.
Work would be done with schools. Some children because of family circumstance miss out on projects but by working in the class room then all would be included.
Partnership Potential Funding
For the community aspect of the project we would be looking to community funds with each venue applying within their region e.g.
IGAS
CNSF Fund
Various Wind farm community funds
10% in-kind
item
|
cost
|
amount
|
total
|
Venue residency
|
£3,100 each per 6 week residency
|
6
|
£18,600
|
Venue exhibition
|
£2,450
|
6
|
£14,700
|
Glass making residency
|
£23,740
|
1
|
£23,740
|
Major exhibition
|
£13,000
|
1
|
£13,000
|
Web development,
Documentation,
evaluation
|
£7,600
|
1
|
£7,600
|
Administrator
|
£15,000
|
1
|
£15,000
|
Legacy publication
|
£6,000
|
1
|
£6,000
|
Place in landscape
|
£900
|
6
|
£5,400
|
|
|
|
£104,040
|
Project Management
North Lands Creative Glass was set up in response to a growing interest in using glass as a medium for artistic expression. Established in 1995 in Lybster a small fishing village in Caithness on the North East coast of Scotland, North Lands Glass has grown from a single class and conference based in the back of an old joiners shop to a pre-eminent glass studio with an international reputation for the quality of its tuition and facilities. It has a history of running successful international and local projects, residencies and partnerships. North Lands Creative Glass is one of three Scottish Craft Organisations to be awarded Regular Funded status by Creative Scotland.
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