An Exciting New Chapter for Northings

3 Nov 2010

NORTHINGS enters an exciting new phase with the launch of our radically restructured website this month. Regular readers will know that Northings is devoted to covering the arts and culture in the Highlands & Islands of Scotland, but the new site will finally allow us to develop our joint aim of providing a platform for an on-line community.

The new Northings.com website

The new Northings.com website

Northings remains part of the HI-Arts family of websites, but we now have our own dedicated platform, leaving the parent site to concentrate on HI-Arts core services to the arts and culture sector in the Highlands & Islands.

The move re-emphasizes the fact that Northings (the on-line journal launched in 2003 has used that name since 2005) is – and has always been – editorially independent of Hi-Arts. As before, the opinions and views expressed in these pages are strictly those of the writers of the articles or reviews, and not HI-Arts or its staff.

Northings will continue to bring you commissioned features and reviews from our team of contributors, and audience-directed news items (sector news will be carried on the Hi-Arts site), but the switch to WordPress will greatly increase our opportunities to develop the on-line community which has always been a key part of our ambitions. We will be adding additional functionality to the site in the days and weeks following the launch.

Naturally, we very much hope that you will choose to embrace the new possibilities. Please register as a subscriber (it is, of course, free to so) by clicking on the Log In tab in the drop down box at the top of the home page, and going to Sign Up Now.

Wendy Sutherland's painting Surface Land (153x122cm) - our thanks go to the artist for the use of another of her landscape images as our backdrop

Wendy Sutherland's painting Surface Land (153x122cm) - our thanks go to the artist for the use of another of her landscape images as our backdrop

Subscribing will give you access not only to the comment boxes which will now be part of every article and review, but also to join in the communal sector of the site, which you can explore in the four tabs on the right hand side of our new banner. Our thanks to Wendy Sutherland for permission to use the artwork which frames the new site. Inevitably, we are still in the process of completing the design and building of the site, and will doubtless discover glitches along the way – please bear with us.

One result of the change is that we will no longer be observing the old print-based tradition of a monthly edition, but will operate on a rolling basis (largely the case in practice anyway), with new material added in a regular flow. One significant difference between Northings and many sites on the web is that, with the exception of artists writing about their own activities, our team of contributors are paid for their work. Many of them are professional writers (whether full-time, part-time or young and aspiring), and many have experience in other aspects of working in the arts.

All of them bring enthusiasm and expertise to their work. We aim to maintain a high standard in our articles and reviews, and in the past we have slipped very occasionally from those standards. As Editor I accept responsibility for that, and everyone involved with Northings will be trying to ensure that we achieve even higher standards in the future.

Reviewing is not an exact science – while a good reviewer will always try to be as objective as possible, inevitably a subjective element will be part of their judgement, and disagreements are inevitable. Our duty as reviewers and commentators is to be as fair, accurate and positive as we can, but always to be honest in our assessments – if the work in question falls short, then it does no one any favours to pretend otherwise.

All new reviews and articles will be posted only on this site from early November, and we aim to migrate all of the archived material on the HI-Arts site (in excess of 2,000 reviews and articles) to this site as soon as practicable. The new Northings will officially launch just before the important Old Maps and New Conference in Inverness on 12-13 November, and we hope that you will join with us in making it a success.

The Conference itself, inspired by Norman MacCaig’s poem of the same name, will feature keynote speeches from Seona Reid (Director of Glasgow School of Art), Willy Roe (Chair of HIE), Andrew Dixon (Chief Executive of Creative Scotland), and Neil Maclean (Director of the Social Enterprise Academy).

It will be the first time that speakers from the cultural, heritage and Social Enterprise sectors have had an opportunity to share a platform in the Highlands & Islands, and provides a valuable chance to examine and evaluate a much-changed landscape for cultural and heritage organisations as we enter a challenging period.

The Conference falls in the 100th anniversary of Norman MacCaig’s birth, and that anniversary will also be marked with exhibitions and events in the area of the region he loved and celebrated above all others, Assynt and Sutherland.

The countrywide Love Music Festival also reaches its final stages, with a full day of music at Eden Court Theatre featuring a range of World Music artists, and provides another reminder that while a sense of local identity remains crucial, the Highlands & Islands are also part of a much wider world of arts and culture which we can embrace with equal enthusiasm.

Kenny Mathieson

Editor