Hopeful futures: a dispatch from SCAN in the Scottish Highlands

Based in the Highlands, SCAN Member Development Officer Emma Gibson joined the team in March 2024, and acts as a champion for our members in the area. Here, she shares some highlights of her first eight months in the role, amplifying Highland voices and building awareness of the role and value of contemporary art in the area.

Since starting my work at SCAN, I’ve met some great people and have seen the Highlands through a whole new technicolour lens of grassroots art organisations and creative happenings. I’ve travelled from Fort William to Inverness to Ullapool to Skye and beyond and there is a lot to shout about up here just now.

I live near Inverness and I am a huge fan of artist collective Circus Artspace, currently in residence in an Outer Spaces ex-shop next to a Poundland on the outskirts of the city. The collective consists of Cat Meighan, Kirsten Body, Lorna Campbell, Nicola Gear and Richard Bracken, who have each brought their own practices and expertise into the fold. The collective shares their vast space with the Circus Fellowship artists (currently Louise Kernaghan), a tool library and the now infamous Highland Zine Bothy – a collaboration with Iona Gibson from DeZiners, housed in a painted wooden shed with traditional thatched heather roof (above). In the past few months, they have hosted loads of workshops, queer placard-making and sober parties for Highland Pride, and I’m excited for their newest venture CaraVAN: three regional network meetings across the Highlands aiming to reach a wide group of artists, providing bespoke lectures and performances within a convivial setting.

Round the corner from Circus in the Wasps Inverness Creative Academy (who have just turned five!), another big local hero is Alice Prentice (above), who single-handedly set up and runs Isle of Riso. Alice offers risograph printing, design and illustration, which is super eco friendly, using soy or rice-based inks and plant fibre stencils. Alice not only prints a wide variety of products and flyers for local bands and music nights, she also runs regular workshops and hosts a very popular monthly Drink and Draw event – great for the social side of the creative community.

Things in the Highlands are definitely shifting, with world-class art works and projects popping up more and more. SAMHLA by Lauren Gault recently premiered across multiple sites over the Isle of Skye, commissioned by SCAN member organisation ATLAS Arts and Glendale-based cultural project Tuath, led by James Oliver. In 2022, Lauren was invited to visit Fàsach in Glendale to think about and respond to the question, “If the land could speak to you and you were listening to try and understand it, what would you say back?” Collaborating with archaeologists, palaeontologists, folklorists, classicists, geologists and soil researchers, the resultant artworks included a brilliant set of sculptures cast with sheep feeders and a film in the fantastic Staffin Dinosaur Museum. The team at ATLAS are really pushing things forwards.

The most thought-provoking of recent events has been Hopeful Futures (above), a weekend gathering at Inverness Creative Academy presenting hopeful initiatives across the Highlands. Hosted by Kirsten Body from Circus Artspace and researcher Mairi McFadyen, the event was very well-attended and moving, with talks, discussions and workshops exploring how to foster hope, possibility, and solidarity in our communities, and how to support each other to gather and cultivate conviviality. I think it’s fitting to talk about these topics in the Highlands right now, given the current climate and especially how rural or remote communities of artists and makers are affected, including the traditional arts community up here. Hopeful Futures was a brilliant event for focusing on what offerings and support can be provided and shared among us, what affects us most including issues of land ownership and sustainable travel, and how we can stay close even though we are often silos. The entire experience really felt like the Highlands does indeed have a very hopeful future.

To get in touch with Emma about Highlands-based activity, and/or to sign up to SCAN’s Highlands-specific newsletter, email [email protected]. 

 

Images:
1. Isle of Riso Drink and Draw, Alice Prentice
2. Highland Zine Bothy, Circus Artspace
3. Isle of Riso studio, Alice Prentice
4. SAMHLA by Lauren Gault, ATLAS Arts
5. Hopeful Futures, Circus Artspace