I was down in Inveraray to visit that remarkable open air museum, Auchindrain Township which gives a unique insight into the way Scottish rural communities lived and worked before crofting. Auchindrain’s Development Manager is an old friend and colleague, Bob Clark. Back in the early 90s Bob had been working for the Scottish Museums Council (now Museums and Galleries Scotland) when I was working for the Scottish Arts Council, but we hadn’t seen each other in the intervening years as our careers had taken us in different directions.

In the two years he’s been at Auchindrain, Bob’s already started introducing the arts on to the site as a powerful tool in helping to interpret its history. The Walking Theatre Company produced a site-specific piece that included the (true) story of Queen Victoria’s visit to Auchindrain, and co-opted the present Duke of Argyll to step out of the audience to play his ancestor greeting the Queen. And Bob’s had local fiddlers playing informally, outside one of the cottages as they might have done when the site was still a living community. He’s even had the local shinty team learning the old skills of their predecessors in order to be able to play on an ordinary rough field that had not had the benefit of years of heavy-duty rollers to smooth out its irregularities!

Twenty years ago, Bob and I were effectively the means of liaison between our two national agencies, and that kept us pretty busy. This was a time when the relationship between the arts and museums sectors was a particularly close one. Large and small museums the length and breadth of the country were willing bookers of a wide range of touring exhibitions which were being created and circulated by SAC client galleries and arts centres. Such exhibitions were often a godsend to museums in helping them to encourage repeat visits, or develop educational projects. In my previous role as Director of the Crawford Arts Centre in St Andrews we’d regularly produced such exhibitions, touring them to museums from Kelvingrove to Shetland. It was a helpful source of income, but more importantly it would justify the expenditure of funding and resources on the exhibition in the first place, and knowing it could have several showings would make it worth investing in a printed catalogue or some audio-visual aids.

But the links between arts and museums went much further than just circulating exhibitions. Scottish Arts Council funding, for a few years, supported a wide range of innovative arts projects in museums, from performances by dance, music and drama companies, to artists’ residencies, and from new commissions to creative learning projects, in schools and with adults.

It was something of a halcyon period in Scottish culture. When the SAC helped to bring a new nationwide photography festival , Fotofeis, into being, many museums were ready and willing to be involved, and indeed some of Fotofeis’ most successful projects were hosted in regional museums like the Dick Institute in Kilmarnock. The climax of this inter-agency collaboration was the preparation of the Charter for the Arts in Scotland, published in 1993, and led by the SAC, but with full participation by the Scottish Museums Council, and also by the Scottish Library and Information Council. That ground-breaking document, the result of copious consultation, set the agenda for arts funding in Scotland for the next decade.

And yet, it didn’t last. By the mid 1990s the dedicated funding schemes had dried up, and, on the whole, museums stopped being venues for imaginative arts events. The process of Museum Registration (now Accreditation) came to dominate the thinking and the time of many Museum Directors and Boards. The rise of the Curator meant that SAC-funded galleries were often more concerned with offering highly distinctive programmes that boosted their own identities, and the interest in sharing touring exhibitions diminished. I think we were all the losers.

Of course, it’s not all bleak. The National Galleries of Scotland have had a long-standing outreach programme, and the Exhibitions Unit of the Highland Council has been one of their most consistent partners, resulting in such treats for Inverness as the Venus Rising exhibition back in 2005  . More recently the Artist Rooms programme, a collaboration between the Art Fund, the Tate, the National Galleries of Scotland, and collector and curator Anthony d’Offay, has brought some of the finest 20th century art not only to Inverness but also to Helmsdale, Thurso, Stornoway and Orkney.

Our own Crafts Development programme, led by Pamela Conacher, has had a highly successful partnership with the Highland Council Exhibitions unit, resulting in substantial summer programmes of exhibitions, small and large, in Inverness Museum and Gallery, both this year and in 2010. Those seasons have given terrific opportunities for those makers involved in our Making Progress mentoring programme, not only by showcasing their own new work, but also by putting it in the context of some of the best contemporary crafts from across the UK.

Detail from Caroline Dear's 100 Ropes, Making Progress Exhibition July 2011

My short tour of Argyll this week also included my first visit to Dunollie, the home of the chiefs of the Clan MacDougall since the 12th century. Most people who know of Dunollie at all would know of it only as the broken tooth of a black keep which the Mull ferry passes as it leaves Oban harbour. But just inland is a fine mansion dating back to the 18th century, the earliest part of which dates from 1745, and will shortly open as a museum and visitor centre .  The Project Director, Catherine Gillies, has bold and ambitious plans for involving the arts in Dunollie, as an absolutely integral part of their remit. So perhaps the pendulum is swinging back once again, and we’ll soon have as productive a relationship between arts and museums as existed twenty years ago, back before Bob Clark or I had any grey hairs.

© Robert Livingston

Auchindrain Museum is situated just 6 miles from Inveraray, on the road to Lochgilphead and Campbeltown (A83).

Auchindrain Museum is open daily from 1 April until 31 October from 10am until 5pm. Last Admission to the Museum is at 4pm daily.

PATSY DYER, an accredited storyteller, writer and award winning garden designer, describes her work in Auchindrain Museum and on an associated visit to Slovakia.

ON MOVING to Argyll early last year I became acquainted with Auchindrain Museum. This intriguing group of stone thatched houses and barns lies close to Inveraray, and is managed by Joanne Howdle.

The initial meeting between myself and the Curator was thanks to Eileen Rae of the Argyll and Bute Council. The Auchindrain farmstead was an instant attraction for me, as my father had been brought up in a very similar setting on the West Coast of Ireland.

Right from the start, Joanne and I discussed a variety of possibilities for bringing storytelling to the museum, and I was delighted when in April I was awarded a bursary from the Scottish Arts Council to research the museum for associated tales suitable for storytelling.

Patsy Dyer with some Slovakian children (photo - Graham Bell)

The award was a wonderful recognition of both the museum and storytelling in such a unique Scottish Building Museum. I have until Spring 2008 to collate the tales and historical facts.

From the many meetings, however, it became obvious that I could also offer my expertise in gardening. Various plans are a-foot, including the re-designing and bringing to life of some of the historical gardens at the museum, especially the Kail Yard. This is a large walled area where a variety of food crops were grown to feed the whole community.

Eastern Slovakia is a region as rural and untouched – and exquisitely beautiful – as the area where Auchindrain rests

Joanna’s aim is to open up the gardens to more visitors and members of the local community who have an interest in the development of a historical garden, surrounded by historical buildings. I will also facilitate a variety of organic garden-related workshops throughout the year.

The history of vegetables and museums are not a new subject for me. I previously worked on ‘The Vegetable Kingdom’ – a wonderful museum in Coventry, which was opened by HRH Prince Charles in June 2003. I was presented to HRH in recognition of the work I had undertaken in the research of vegetables as well as writing the accurate historical information on display.

The collaboration with Auchindrain Museum has developed very positively over the past 12 months. In April, Joanne and I were invited to visit Slovakia on an Innovation in Cultural Heritage Interpretation Exchange. This was funded within the framework of the ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ programme of the European Commission (DG EAG) and organised by ARCH, Comrie, Scotland.

The exchange was hosted in Eastern Slovakia by ‘Krajina’, a small private company who specialise in crafts, conservation of buildings, folk traditions and customs amongst many other subjects.

Outdoor museum at Svidnik (photo - Graham Bell)

As a storyteller and writer, this exchange was very important to me in many ways. It enabled me to work with the Curator of Auchindrain in a parallel historical setting. It also opened up a wide New World of tales and customs from a part of the world similar in many ways to Argyll – and yet so tantalisingly unfamiliar.

Eastern Slovakia is a region as rural and untouched – and exquisitely beautiful – as the area where Auchindrain rests, and shares many of the toils and tales of the past. It is certainly a country worth visiting for all sorts of inspiration, whether for artists, botanists, dancers or storytellers as well as skiers, hikers and wine aficionados!

I collated a great deal of information, which we hope to utilise in various ways, including storytelling events with Slovakian stories and music, as well as dance.

In 2008 it is hoped that there will be visitors to Auchindrain from Slovakia as part of the ICHI exchange. Joanne and I will be able to show the visitors many wonderful cultural gems of the Argyll region (including the wealth of stories collected thanks to the Scottish Arts Council bursary), and music.

The Innovation in Cultural Heritage Interpretation Exchange group in Slovakia (photo - Joanne Howdle)

A special ‘Kail Yard Ceilidh’ will be arranged to combine with the development of the gardens, with of course storytelling and dance classes run by a local dance teacher.

As a storyteller and writer, the exchange has fired my imagination. Perhaps more importantly, it has given Joanne, the Curator of Auchindrain Museum and myself an exciting and unique opportunity to provide a combination of cultural gems – tales, pictures, workshops, dances – for both the local community and schools, but also for those who visit from Eastern Slovakia next year.

I told Greek Myths to a mixed nationality audience while in Slovakia. In return the groups’ amenable translator told Slovakian stories on a following evening.

I realised that there was a wealth of tales to discover in such an untouched country, and am in the process of collecting stories for events at Auchindrain and at other storytelling occasions.

Her Cultural Heritage Interpretation Exchange also took her to many outdoor building museums which, will undoubtedly provide a wonderful backdrop to the fascinating information she will discover when she begins her research at Auchindrain in May.

I am very excited about starting the research and the garden design at Auchindrain. A great combination for such a special Museum which, if you haven’t yet been there, it is well worth a visit.

© Patsy Dyer, 2007

Links

• Auchindrain Museum
• Scottish Storytelling Directory