BARRY GORDON catches up with Darren Manson to look at the chequered history and present prospects for cinema in Thurso.

BARRY GORDON recalls the glory days of the early 1980s for Donald Mackenzie and his fellow Caithness breakdancers, and catches up on where the scene is going now.

Timespan, Helmsdale, until 25 October 2009

JOHN CAIRNS replies to Barry Gordon’s observations on Caithness dialect in George Gunn’s Fields of Barley.

I BEGIN this month with an apology. In September, Northings ran a review of a reading of George Gunn’s play Fields of Barley in Thurso. I received an e-mail from John Cairns, writing on behalf of both Grey Coast Theatre and Caithness Arts, strongly objecting to what he saw as “an attack on the use of Caithness dialect”.

GILES SUTHERLAND looks back on a stimulating Conference overshadowed by the death of a co-founder of North Lands Creative Glass.

GEORGE GUNN welcomes a creative collaboration that is an eloquent testimony to survival.

The Mill Theatre, Thurso, 5 September, 2009

ROB ADAMS savours a major step forward for Caithness pianist and composer James Ross in the first of this year’s New Voices commissions at Celtic Connections.

SUE JANE TAYLOR and FIN MACRAE report on an event that brought the words of Caithness author Neil Gunn to literal life.