TOM BRYAN looks at the role of Katrina Gordon as the Cultural Co-ordinator for Caithness.

KATRINA GORDON took up her post as the Cultural Co-ordinator for Caithness in January 2003. It is a two year part-time pilot project, based on working with both primary and secondary schools. In Katrina’s case, it means one day in Thurso, one day in Wick, serving all of Caithness. I asked Katrina herself what the challenges were.

“Perceptions and perspective!,” she insisted. “How teachers perceive artists, how artists see schools, how Highland Council sees both schools and artists, and how  can I possibly get all three to work together to the greater good when they all have such different sets of priorities?! Obviously budget constraints are a challenge, too, but I think altering perceptions is the bigger challenge.”

Katrina Gordon is part of a Highland-wide team of cultural co- ordinators, each serving their areas: Ali Macdonald (Lochaber); Cailean Maclean (Skye and Lochalsh); Caroline Storey (Inverness); Linda Jolly (Badenoch and Strathspey); Shona Arthur (Moray); Jane Bregazzi (Sutherland).

Those of us involved in the arts know all the soggy clichés that are trotted out to challenge the work we do, and even what we are. Lets get them out in the open then. Culture? Something the snobs try to impose on us, like opera and ballet. Money better spent on public toilets, crime prevention, etc.

Co-ordinator? Who says we arent already coordinating? Coordinate what? Katrina also acknowledged this factor.

“A grand job title, isnt it? I really dislike it. Arts and Heritage co-ordinator would be more meaningful to most folk I work with. The ideal would be to have an Arts co-ordinator working closely alongside a Heritage and Environment co-ordinator as a team in schools – all full time, or course! As it is, I spend lots of time explaining what my perception of “culture” is so that teachers and artists know what I could do for them.”

In the Highlands, culture is usually meant in its widest, most universal sense as the culture of all the people – landscape, folklife, language, customs, history, and the whole shebang, what the Gaels call An Dealbh Mhor, “the big picture”.

This is where Caithness shines likes its famous open landscape or its Aurora Borealis (“Merry Dancers” locally). “Co-ordinate” by its nature implies lots of stuff going on, a bit like artistic air traffic control. Caithness is a relatively small county of 25,000 people but the amount of real cultural activity is remarkable.

People on the land make and tell things that are thousands of years young. People on the sea are the same. The Flow Country to the west is unique in the entire world and bird life and land wildlife is so special that nobody in Caithness pays much attention to it.

Heritage? Standing stones in virtually every field, archaeology that is so unique but accessible that many special sites havent even been labelled or excavated. Stone Age. Iron Age. Pict. Gael. Viking.

Katrina has accomplished a lot and feels there is a long way to go, with future projects ranging from glass and song, to orchestral music and heritage projects. Katrina has a musicians perspective on this challenge.

“The most important thing I learned at the Royal Academy of Music was how to play at the same time as listening across the orchestra. This is a surprisingly transferable and useful skill for this job as a co-ordinator. Im always listening – to artists, to teachers, to children and occasionally even to bosses, while I get on with the job in hand.”

Caithness is described in many ways, but “crossroads” is one that needs some explanation. It was and is the centre of a sea empire, in fact “south” of many lively places, including Orkney and Norway. Some people hurry through Caithness in order to get to the mountains of Sutherland or the sites of Orkney, but a surprising number of musicians, artists and arts companies want to come here as a destination in itself.

So bringing culture in, from the time of the Vikings onward, is not a problem. Locally, we now have this opportunity for a worthwhile programme that could depend almost entirely on co-ordinating the schools with what is happening in Caithness and bringing it into the schools as talks, workshops, and events.

I have to get personal for a minute. I grew up in post-war working- class Canada. My father was a motorcycle mechanic, my grandfather a wheat farmer. I would never think of their immense intelligence and heritage as culture. If “culture” ever lived anywhere near, I never knew it.

Yet, this is the case anywhere that is far from the centres of “power”. There are many remarkable individuals in Caithness who could be figures of international renown for their knowledge and remarkable skills. Their friends and neighbours dont see them as culture though they are genuine representatives of it. Katrina Gordons real job is probably just to remind people that their own culture is abundant, right here and now.

Tom Bryan is the Arts Development Officer for Caithness.