2007 might seem a long way away at this point, but the intervening months will fly past quickly enough. We decided to invite 30 or so of the established providers of arts and culture in the Highlands to give us their views on Highland 2007. Around half of that number responded (with an additional handful of apologies), and their views will provide food for thought as the event takes shape.

Aisling Bryce
Director, Lyth Arts Centre, Caithness

I feel that any increase in funding in the arts in the Highlands can only be a good thing. My main concern with 2007 is what happens on the 1 January 2008? Any scheme that we will apply for 2007 funding for will be looking to have some degree of sustainability after the magic year has been and gone.

I would encourage other organizations and individuals to consider taking the same approach in order to avoid a plethora of half-baked but well intended projects coming to fruition only to die a death in 2008 once the money tree has shed all it’s leaves.

Alastair McDonald
Director, Highland Festival

The Highland Festival (HF) sees Highland 2007 (H2007) as a unique opportunity to break through the glass ceiling over the coming years. The raised profile the Highlands is set to enjoy in the lead up to, during and after H 2007 can only be of benefit to the HF, making for a stronger event with the potential to become one of the important legacies of the year.

The injection of additional funding into the cultural sector in all its wonderful diversity will have a positive impact. By adding value to the existing cultural community, H2007 will help feed the art which is the lifeblood of our organisation. The healthier the cultural scene, the more dynamic the HF will become.

It’s too early to talk about specific projects but HF has been developing some ambitious ideas which celebrate our vibrant culture and the role the Highland Diaspora has played in keeping it alive throughout the world.

With the confident and expanding city of Inverness as its base, the HF’s ambitions of attracting new audiences from home and abroad, experiencing new commissioned art from the Highlands fits the remit set for H2007 – and if the glove fits, why not wear it?!

Anne MacLeod
Novelist and poet

I am not currently involved in any organisational role for the arts, but as a local wordsmith would hope that Highland 2007 will be able to highlight the excellence of Highland writing, the wealth of talent across the area in all the forms, celebrating the established and encouraging new talent.

Book festivals in the area have been considerable successes. A book festival of the North would be exciting, matching Highland writers with writers from similar latitudes – Scandinavia, Iceland, Cape Breton, Canada, Alaska. Film too: why not combine it with a film and music festival? I’m looking forward to it already.

Arthur Cormack
Director, Fèisean nan Gaidheal

Well, in short, Féisean nan Gaidheal would like to see any major celebration of Highland culture having Gaelic at its centre, and we would also like to see a celebration of our work over 25 years, involving traditional music being performed by young people throughout the Highlands, and giving them the opportunity to work with national and international performers.

While I don’t want to turn this into a selling job for the Blas festival which Féisean nan Gaidheal has developed in partnership with the Highland Council and PAN, it does have the potential to deliver so much of what Highland 2007 states it is about.

Highland 2007 has six key strands – Arts, Heritage, Language, Sport, Environment and Science. Blas can help deliver on 4 out of the 6.

1. Arts: Blas is clearly a major celebration of Highland traditional arts, and from what I can make out, the only such celebration to happen on a pan-Highland basis for that year, and in the run-up to it.

2. Heritage: The Highland and Gaelic arts by definition reflect the heritage of the area, and the international visiting artists will clearly demonstrate the shared heritage we have with Ireland and Nova Scotia.

3. Language: Every single event will feature Gaelic, and all publicity materials and the website will be fully bilingual. We are looking at innovative ways of introducing every single member of the audience to Gaelic in a way which is not ‘heavy’ or ‘in your face’. We want to have fun with it. This will be one way to deliver on the ‘centrality of Gaelic’ to Highland 2007

4. Environment: Again Gaelic song reflects many aspects of the environment in which we live, and An Tobar will feature visuals which reflect the natural environment also.

Highland 2007 is focussing on seven major themes – Youth, Gaelic, Creativity, Highland Homecoming, Access and Inclusiveness, Re-interpretation of Traditional Icons and The Highlands as an Inspirational Place. Blas can deliver on all of these themes to varying degrees.

1. Youth: Highland youth will be amply represented in Blas, with young people from the Féisean, Gizzenbriggs, Sgoil Chiùil na Gaidhealtachd, individuals like Graham Mackenzie, Jenna Cumming, the North Highland Fiddlers, etc. Blas will make a virtue of the involvement of young people being on exactly the same basis as some of the better known, and international, acts to be featured.

2. Gaelic: As above, every single event will feature Gaelic. All publicity and press releases up until now, and beyond will be bilingual, and no-one will come to a Blas event without experiencing Gaelic language, and that won’t just be sung!

3. Creativity: Blas could be a major celebration of Highland creativity, and with the right level of funding, much more could be done to encourage creativity. This is certainly our aspiration for the 2007 festival in particular, but we are making some headway with specially commissioned concerts, like An Tobar this year.

4. Highland Homecoming: We certainly hope that people, through time, will travel home to the Highlands for Blas. We certainly can’t promise that will happen this year, but what I can say is that with people like Cathy Ann MacPhee coming ‘home’ from Canada for the event, and others like Katy Mackenzie and all the Cèilidh Trailers coming home from the south for the event, there is some degree of ‘homecoming’. I suspect this aim is more to do with international audiences, however, and it is our aim to build such an audience, but that will take time, and investment. Significantly though, the first tickets sold through The Booth for Blas, were sold to a couple from South Carolina!

5. Access and Inclusiveness: I believe Blas will offer a high degree of access to our indigenous Highland language and culture, and that we have been completely inclusive in our approach to programming, by involving Féisean, PAN members – and indeed any other promoter who wanted to be involved – and by involving young and old, local and international artists. All the Highland schools will be involved through our Gaelic Music Week to coincide with Blas.

6. Re-interpretation of Traditional Icons: Not sure what H2007 would consider ‘traditional icons’ to be, but in Blas, there will certainly be plenty of re-interpretation of traditional Highland culture, and one ‘icon’ is the Gaelic language. Another is traditional music.

7. The Highlands as an Inspirational Place: What is more inspirational than our indigenous music and language, when professionally presented, or played and sung by our young people? What is more inspirational than the Féis movement, as one example of that, with another being communities working together, as they will be in Blas?

There was a survey carried out by NFO/System 3 for The Herald in January 2004 which showed that people in Scotland would rather that traditional music was supported from the public purse, by a far bigger percentage than the other forms of music put together! It showed that nationally 31% of people in Scotland felt that traditional music should be publicly funded, compared to only 4% for classical music and 2% for opera. Significantly, 35% of those supporting traditional music were between 18 and 34, with a further 31% aged 35-54. Those supporting opera were mostly in the 55+ age group. In the Highlands & Islands, support for traditional music rose to 57%, with 4% for classical, and 3% for opera. The people of the Highlands are ready for, and want, a Blas festival, or something of this nature.

There is not another single event that I am aware of, being promoted currently by Highland 2007, which has the potential to deliver as much for Highland 2007 as Blas does. Our work in the schools, and our longer standing work through the Féisean, has the potential to help deliver the cultural pledge, and if we can build up Blas as a successful event, then we most certainly can have a festival which becomes international, both in terms of who is on the stage, but also in terms of who attends it, and which can be up there with the likes of Celtic Colours and the Hebridean Celtic Festival.

Bob Pegg
Musician and Storyteller

Really sorry not to be able to respond positively about 2007. It seems so murky.

Colin Marr
Director, Eden Court Theatre

2007 should deliver some fantastic events that will live for a long time in the memory of all those that take part as audiences or creators.

It should also be the year that we all realise the value that arts and culture add to the quality of our life in the Highlands. We should enjoy them for their own sake, for the part they play in the education and confidence of our children and for the draw they give our region in attracting talented incomers – who will play a part in the future development of our region’s sustainability.

To achieve these goals 2007 has to be the catalyst for our public agencies (local authorities and enterprise network) to start planning arts and culture in a serious manner. That will mean planning in partnership with each other and crucially, in partnership with our cultural experts – our performers, creators, promoters and venues.

We have to use that planning to tie our national agencies into our plans well beyond 2007. It is vital that these agencies don’t deliver for 2007 and then walk away but that they continue to see arts and culture in the Highlands as part of delivering their long term agendas. We can only do that with serious planning that involves all our experts.

Fiona MacKenzie
Mairi Mhor Gaelic Song Fellow

As the Mairi Mhor Gaelic Song Fellow for Highland Council, I am particularly interesetd and hopeful for what Highland 2007 will be able to do for the promotion in particular of the Gaelic Arts.

The Gaelic Culture is the heart of Highland Culture in many ways and Highland 2007 will hopefully help to develop increased awareness of the language, its culture and its future.

2007 will hopefully be about looking forward, whilst retaining an awareness of who the Highlander is and where he has come from. In particular, interest has never been stronger than at present in the field of Gaelic song and Highland music, and 2007 should be utilised as a platform of all that is the best of the culture.

We possess a unique traditional culture which should be used to promote Scotlands indiginous nature far more than at present – I see daily the endless demand for more Gaelic song and music from all across the world, and 2007 is an excellent opportunity to use this demand and sell the Gaidhealtachd in all corners of the world.

George Gunn
Artistic Director, Grey Coast Theatre Company

My anxieties about 2007 have not gone. I still worry about what comes in 2008 and if the Highland Council and Events Scotland are going to have a high profile Arts Festival at Eden Court or thereabouts at the expense of the rest of the rest of the Highlands and Islands.

I still have grave reservations re. the lack of arts strategy in relation to 2007, and the suspicion still remains that this is a civic exercise by Highland Council who wish to glean the maximum publicity and profile out of the event without any clear idea about long term provision for, or promotion of, the arts in the north of Scotland.

The local authority is reluctant to engage in any dialogue about future aims and is paranoid, it seems to me, in regard to any criticism of 2007, however mild, and especially in regard to their relationship with Cameron MacIntosh, which I find nauseous.

I do not believe there is any clear vision of what they are hoping to achieve re. 2007, or how the cultural infrastructure of the area can be improved or the artists working within its boundaries encouraged.

I still believe, because I have seen or read or heard nothing to the contrary, that this is nothing but a civic exercise which disguises the real and chronic problem arts practitioners face, and how that interfaces with the cultural life and expectations of the population.

I believe the 2007 company have shown themselves to be both mediocre and opportunistic, and the sooner all cultural provision is taken away from Highland Council – in fact, from all local authorities – the better. I believe this is the root cause of the civil war raging between COSLA and the Cultural Commission. I do not believe, either, that the Executive is interested in sorting it out, and I fear that they have no commitment to sourcing new money in any shape or form.

On the positive side – yes, there is one! – Grey Coast will be participating in 2007 with a three year project, “Butcher’s Broom”, which is a theatre project based on Neil Gunn’s novel involving Lybster and Dunbeath Primary Schools, culminating in a big production (well, biggish) at The Light In The North Festival in Dunbeath in November, 2007.

Our community theatre wing, The Skraelings, will also be involved in a three year project for 2007 culminating in a community play in Thurso in 2007 (when not exactly clear) which will be a Caithness take on “Don Quixote” by Cervantes.

The “Butcher’s Broom” project has received £18k over three years from the Community Fund and The Skraelings will be applying in September.

What I would suggest is that the 2007 company, HI-Arts, Highland Council, the Scottish Arts Council, the Highland Theatre Network, Féis Rois, etc, should have a conference at the end of 2007 or early in 2008, and that the Arts Journal should facilitate it, and see where we are, what has been achieved – successes, failures etc- and if there is any strategy emerging which we can all sign up to. We need commitment from the authorities, not tokenism, and whatever else it is, 2007 is a token event.

In Caithness we are in the process, through Caithness Arts, of forming a cultural strategy for the county. It won’t amount to a hill of beans if it is not part of a Highland wide vision.

Gordon Maclean
Director, An Tobar, The Tobermory Arts Centre

The Highlands need an arts showcase. This is a great opportunity for INCREASED investment in the arts. 2007 should demonstrate the wealth of talent in this area and reflect the year round work carried out by artists and venues. Ideally existing promoters should be given the chance to stage flagship events beyond their normal budgets.

Highland Festival has been the only chance so far to stage grand events – let’s hope 2007 doesn’t mark the end of the festival.

Every year is a Highland Year of Culture. 2007 should draw attention to this.

Hamish MacDonald
Joint Artistic Director, Dogstar Theatre

A Festival of Theatre for Highland 2007 is surely a fine idea. I first became aware of it thanks to an email circulated by George Gunn, who I believe originated the idea, some months back.

However, it must be ensured that the execution of this idea is not something greatly removed from its original context: an opportunity to celebrate the work of Highland based theatre companies.

Already this original idea has grown into something bigger – something of national and even international dimensions, and that is also a very fine thing. But how often at our meetings and in our discussions do we hear of the Highland position, of that feeling of marginalisation within Scotland and the wider world, due to a combination of geographical isolation and perceived urban bias?

What we therefore must not allow to happen is to find ourselves marginalised within this festival, as a mere add-on or background voice to the whole piece, and ensure that Highland theatre companies play a balanced role in the programme.

In 2003, Jack McConnel supported the 2007 venture by pledging the Executive’s financial support and saying: “This initiative is a great chance to showcase the very best of the Highlands unique and diverse cultural talents”.

It is difficult at the moment to see what the “great chance” will mean to the people involved at the coalface of producing art in the Highlands, grinding out a daily existence from it. But no one is going to do it for us. The proposed festival could be the window, as far as theatre companies go.

Highland culture! What is it and who decides? James VI once put a plan in place to murder the entire population of the Western Isles and I guess in terms of popularity we’ve come a long way since then.

Let us give thanks to Glengarry and that first ever manifestation of popular Highland entertainment, when four sturdy kilted fellows were ordered to engage in a contest to twist the legs from a cow – offering a fat sheep as a prize.

There may be haggis. There will be tartan. Cyclists will pit their mettle against the formidable slopes of the Ben. There will be other things, and doubtless many of them will be fine. Stories will be told. Songs sung. Grey suited men will come and go, with siller clinking in their pooches. Will there be a festival of theatre, with Highland work at its core?

Jason Rose
Broadcaster and Director of the Inverness Book Festival

With only a year and a half to go, I’m still unclear what shape the year will take. I think folk need a yardstick. Is it back-to-back festivals for 12 months or what?

For most folk ‘Highland culture’ is probably an image of fiddlers and swinging kilts. To me it means naff tourism like toy Nessies and exhibitions involving phrases like ‘while we were being ethnically cleansed by the English’, but also wonderful day-to-day stuff like having a pint in the Market Bar, going for a stroll in the Ness Islands, buying a book in Mr Leakey’s, or playing frisbee on a spectacular beach.

My own hope is that it inspires and enables a generation. It should make young Highlanders realise that this is a great place and there’s nothing to stop them having a go at creating something themselves. Why buy The Da Vinci Code, sip a Starbucks latte and try on clothes in Gap when they could be writing their own novel, setting up their own café and designing their own fashion range?

Okay, a tall order, but heck, this is an inspiring place to live and 2007 should make folk realise that and enable them to follow their dreams. We have lots of creative types here already but they don’t get enough limelight. 2007 should encourage these people to blow their own trumpet.

In terms of how I see the scheme in relation to the Book Festival, I hope that the year of culture enables the Inverness Book Festival to be beefed up to its full potential, and taken as seriously as any of the other major literary festivals in the UK. This year is only our 2nd but we’re already proving that there’s no shortage of local talent while big names from elsewhere in the UK are keen to come here.

As a broadcaster with Moray Firth Radio, I hope 2007 realises what a powerful force local radio is. It should encourage all broadcasters to reflect Highland culture more. For a start, there should be prime-time opportunities on commercial stations like MFR for local bands to perform. It goes back to what I said about inspiring a generation.

In general, I think most folk expect 2007 to be a year of ‘events’, like a great big gala. I don’t think enough has been done to explain to people that ‘culture’ can be almost anything and that they can suggest how to spend £9 million celebrating it.

Joe Gibbs
Organiser, Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival

My thoughts on 2007? In the face of losing out in the City of Culture bid, the concept of 2007 gives an inspired opportunity to focus the eyes of the world on what we have to offer in terms of the culture of the Highlands and the cultural events that take place here.

From the Belladrum perspective, if funds are available, we’d like to be able to use 2007 as a means of developing a whole new dimension to the festival which we can then continue in future years and perhaps export to other festivals.

We expect to encounter the usual hedge of obstacles in terms of who and what is qualified to apply for support from public bodies. But INE have been very helpful to us this year, which gives us hope.

I have a couple of worries – did 2007 get underway early enough? Will there be enough funds available, or will they be spread too thin to make any real impact? Will people suffer from culture-fatigue if the programme is too extensive for 2007 and too many new events are added?

I hope these concerns will prove groundless. At the end of the day, we should applaud any intiative that tries to share the beauty and culture of our rough bounds with the rest of the world, and brings more prosperity and enjoyment to their inhabitants.

John Durnin
Artistic Director, Pitlochry Festival Theatre

Here in Pitlochry, it’s hard not to feel a little remote from Highland 2007. After all, we’re outwith the central funding region and therefore out of the information loop, while theatre doesn’t seem to feature too highly on the Highland 2007 agenda (unless, of course, you`re talking Cameron MacIntosh-backed musicals, in which case come in, sit down, will you take a wee plain biscuit with your tea?)

Yet despite this, despite the pervading sense that the project’s political genesis – as a second-best response to the doomed City of Culture bid – has made it a generalised, promotional bolt-on, rather than a genuine celebration which has grown out of the artistic, cultural and economic life of the Highlands; despite all of this, the possibility remains that Highland 2007 might offer some benefit to organisations like ourselves.

To a greater or lesser extent, the sustainability of building-based producers in such depopulated regions has always been dependent upon visitors from outwith the immediate area: with a population of only 11,000 in Highland Perthshire, Pitlochry Festival Theatre learned long ago to regard the population of Scotland as a whole as its natural audience constituency, with the rest of the UK thrown in for good measure.

So Highland 2007’s most basic promotional aims – to increase visitor awareness of the cultural infrastructure of the Highlands and boost the profile of the Highlands as a visitor destination both for UK inward and overseas tourism – are ones which PFT can and will support, even if only from the perspective of purely selfish economic benefit.

So in view of this compatibility, will we be programming projects in 2007 that will specifically reflect the themes of Highland 2007? Possibly – but not necessarily as a direct response to the Year of Highland Culture. 2007 also marks the 300th anniversary of a momentous political event: the anniversary of the signing of the Act of Union will probably prompt a year-long, media-driven public debate about Scotland`s political, social and economic future (no bad thing in itself). It is arguable, therefore, that when considering our plans for 2007, it is to the bigger picture – the question of who or what Scotland is or can be – that we should principally address ourselves.

However, given the central issues of history, identity, purpose and destiny around which such a debate might revolve, any consideration of the role of Highland culture within contemporary Scotland would no doubt make a useful contribution to the wider discussion.

So might Highland 2007 provide us with a way to kill two birds with one stone? Might disinterring Rob Roy, or staging the wind farm debate, or dramatising the consequences of the Clearances two centuries on provide us with a way to to contemplate Scotland’s future through the prism of the Highlands’ past? I’m not sure yet. But it’s an interesting idea . . .

John McGeoch
Artistic Director, Arts in Motion

Given that 2007 is a happening thing it seems to best serve as a focus point to collect and collate work.

On a funding financial level there seems to be two strands. Strand one is that the vast amount of potential revenue has already been creamed off and the second strand has, by political necessity, been designated to the ground level, the community, in what are effectively very small packages. A very little money trying to do a lot.

Similarly as there has been virtually no contact, communication, consultation or desire to work with the professional arts organizations in the area from the 2007 body, it really seems up to us on an individual level to decide on our level of input and if feeling optimistic to apply for some of the limited funding routes available to produce either a special piece of work or a programme of work.

We would like to do both and having a physical base we are working towards utilizing this to provide a year long programme of activity from theatre to installation to film to music.

It will serve as a good marker and will mean co-ordinating all the strands which the company are already engaged upon into one thread. As well as performance based events we would like to host a symposium / workshop on new media techniques in contemporary arts practice, have a summer season of workshops for young people centred around our current strengths and activities, that is video and Blue Screen, drama utilizing new media, aerial and physical work, the visual arts and performance and finally contemporary music and projection.

We would like to follow up our digital installation piece for the Highland Festival, ‘Tricks of Delight’, with a ‘Tricks of Delight 2’. This will be an interactive promenade type installation with the option of performance built in on some occasions. The work will continue some of the previous themes, contain some of the work created since – such as the Cullen Ceiling which was produced last year for Duff House and will feature some new pieces. It will also showcase the raft of film-making that the company is currently engaged upon.

We would also like to install a themed environment for children that would run for a month. We produce these environments, which contain just about everything that the company does from drama to making, video and animation to circus, every Christmas for Gleneagles Hotel and have long wished to be able to install them in our home base for local children to experience. If we don`t make it in 2007 then we probably never will.

We will almost certainly be producing at least one new theatre piece – probably in the childrens/family category and will probably be involved in a couple of other productions with other companies probably not in the childrens category.

We will be looking for a collaboration with a music ensemble or band for projection work.

We will no doubt be continuing our major thrust of small film-making and will top it off with a film festival / Oscars ceremony in December, number 4 by then.

We are currently talking with the Tartan Heart Festival about creating a much larger theatre tent / presence for 2007.

Basically, like now, I expect that we will be flat out doing exciting, challenging and innovative projects. I also expect many of them will be under-resourced, impossibly deadlined and plagued by bureaucratic nonsenses. Maybe because its 2007 they might be better co-ordinated into a progamme instead of happening whenever, wherever, and sometimes however! Who knows, we may even get on the radar.

Rob Ellen
Music Promoter, Medicine Music

I’ve loads to say about the arts scene in the Highlands, but it sometimes feels like you have to be a non-profit making charitable organisation to have any say, or more accurately get any support from the arts funding bodies, so these days I’ve learned to just go along cutting my own furrow.

2007 will have opportunities for me doubtless, and will probably be good for business. One option could be if Joe Gibbs doesn’t lose his shirt over the Belladrum Festival this year and we can consolidate next year, then we may be in some sort of shape to look at what we might do in 2007.

Joe and I are talking nebulously about options, but the future of the event is in the balance. Again I don’t yet see masses of support being offered from the funding bodies for that worthy enterprise at this point, though I know Joe is actively seeking sponsorship and exploring options in the public sector, as an independent professional promoter he seems at this point at least to be in the same situation as I am.

I suggest if you want the professional art promoters (or me in particular) to be excited about 2007 you need to offer some sort of support package designed for the entrepreneurial spirit. I would love to do a songwriters festival for local and travelling troubadours, and/or a Bluegrass Festival – considering the roots of this important and highly influential strand of music can be traced back to the Highlands and many of the tunes even now are the same by different names as fiddle tunes in our tradition.

I would really love to highlight those connections in 2007, and know that it would be hugely popular in the States as well as over here. I fully expect such an event would be seen as a pilgrimage for many lovers of the music world wide, a return to the motherland. I’ve a name for it already: “May The Circle Be Unbroken”.

Offer me some encouragement and I’ll get it together, I have the enthusiasm, connections, I have the infrastructure and the energy, I just don’t see the opportunity.

2007 maybe different, but I have drawn blanks every time I have approached HI~Arts or any other public funded body to gain funding and a budget to organise such events as an independent promoter. I’m very very open to a precedent being established in 2007!

Simon Fildes
Producer, GOAT and www.left-luggage.co.uk

To apply our brains to Highland 2007 is just a bit tortuous right now. I don’t feel particularly engaged with it as I’ve never found Highland culture to be hugely engaged with us! Something to do with living in Badenoch and Strathspey, perhaps [Simon and Katrina McPherson have now moved to Nairnshire], which seems to us to be a void in terms of contemporary visual arts.

The HI~Arts website reinforces the perception in its music-heavy emphasis. This is Highland culture. I’m interested in the arts in general and contemporary visual arts in particular. The most exciting event to happen in recent times (london fieldworks) didn’t even register on the HI~Arts site.

I’m not being cynical, just aware that my view of the arts doesn’t seem to be a high priority in this region, and therefore my opinion is probably deeply irrelevant. Unfortunately (and fortunately) further south and internationally we find an interested audience and interesting work.

© HI~Arts, 2005