Community Life, Culture and Identity
At Home in Mackay Country: the carrying stream flows on
A new collaborative community project is underway, connecting recent work by NW2045, particularly that undertaken by Sophie Clark (as detailed in the RLUP Land+ full handbook here) and Strathnaver Museum.
The project will link more recently gathered knowledge with archives from the Mackay Country Community Project Back to the Future, launched in 2004. This was a project inspired and created by local communities which itself emerged from the EU Life demonstration Dùthchas Project, which aimed to enable sustainable local development defined and implemented by local folk themselves.
Together, we are focusing on placemaking and the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), also referred to as Living Heritage, relating to the ‘knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe’.
We expect to explore language (particularly Gaelic and Norse place and plant names), oral traditions (stories, songs / poems, music, ceilidh culture), feelings and attachment to place (concepts of Dùthchas), memories, spirituality and world view (concepts of rurality, placemaking).
Who we are: Strathnaver Museum and NW2045 RLUP, have joined forces to lead the project. Rachel Skene (NW2045) and Fiona Mackenzie (Strathnaver Museum) are working with Ronnie Lansley as Tradition Bearer in Residence and Apprentice Sophie Clark to connect past and current activity, with input from across the area.
What we hope to achieve: The project comes 20 years since the publication of At Home in Mackay Country. This project aims to consider:
- the state of our cultural heritage today;
- identify how / if it has changed; and
- how it continues to evolve to meet today’s challenges and opportunities.
We intend that during the project:
At Home in Mackay Country is shared and celebrated with a new audience;
- Living Heritage practitioners and tradition bearers find contemporary ways to contribute to placemaking, including linked to local and regional planning partnerships;
- Learning from tradition bearers to further explore this knowledge sharing as part of building community resilience, in meeting the socio- economic- environmental challenges facing us today and improving health and wellbeing.
- A programme of work to promote and transmit ICH based on the findings of our project is collectively designed for 2027, and funding sought to carry this forward.
