Two heritage projects in North West Sutherland have been awarded nearly £200,000 between them to carry out research and a series of activities over the next 18 months.
Strathnaver Museum is aiming to increase heritage knowledge and involve people in development of heritage awareness through improvement of the Museum’s resources. This is to be achieved through producing an inventoried database of the museums artefacts and promoting local and global demand for this work through building up website archive access.
Training is to be provided to the volunteers to enable effective genealogical research to create a genealogy provision.
There will be a roadshow series of events throughout Mackay Country with an invitation to people to bring along their antiques, relics or unknown objects, share their experiences, memories and stories and find out more about their piece from an archivist.
Over the course of the project there will be guided walks in Strathnaver with a series of winter talks and other social events focused on local history, music and archaeology based on the museum collection.
Mackay Country Community Trust is working with the Museum on three aspects of local history shared and related by the diverse communities of Mackay Country.
The integrated project themes will include education, transport, music, communication, life styles and class structure.
The three aspects are Hostel Days where information will be gathered from people who attended the schools on the east coast of Sutherland up to the year 2000 when secondary education was delivered centrally; the era of Side Schools where education was delivered to local communities in remote areas; and the "reverse side" of the Highland Clearances – much has been written and many studies continue about the Clearances but the Trust wish to explore the reverse of this and look at the immigrants and newcomers to the area. The history of the area is a history of movement, everyone either has family who emigrated out of Mackay Country or family who settled in Mackay Country. Some families have both. This makes it an ideal topic for a community based exploration and a heritage project.
Both ventures will involve outreach events throughout North West Sutherland and in total seven artists, an archivist, a curatorial advisor, a heritage researcher, digital consultant and project manager will be commissioned to provide an integrated schools programme and final touring exhibitions.
The results will become part of the Mackay Country Archive and Strathnaver Museum Collection.
The projects are being part financed by the Scottish Government and the European Community Highland LEADER 2007-13 Programme and Heritage Lottery, Comunn na Gàidhlig and Highlands and Islands Enterprise with support from CVS North and the Highland Council.
