There Shall Be Blood!
Name of study: There Shall Be Blood!
Start date: January 2013
End date: August 2013
Partner: Timespan Museum and Gallery/Creative Scotland
Funding source: Creative Scotland
Description of study and the social/cultural/economic issue(s) it is addressing
The project sought to explore the cultural tensions emerging around the 200th anniversary of the Highland Clearances within the small village of Helmsdale, Sutherlandshire. Partnering with the local cultura’ centre, Timespan Museum and Gallery, the project aimed highlight the difference between those in the village who feel the Clearances were the most significant historical event of the area, and those who felt their cultural/historical importance was oversimplified and overstated. There were additional frictions between those who felt these historical events were negative, and others who felt they kicked-started a positive development of the area. It also made links to a ‘contemporary Highland Clearances’ as young people left the rural centres for the urban centres of the south.
Project participants
The 604 residents of Helmsdale.
How was the project put together? (illustrate interdisciplinary working)
The project was designed as artist-led research, using participatory and socially engaged methodologies, developing event-based artworks to explore and examine the ideas. While artist-led, it worked with historians, local policy makers/councillors, law-enforcement, education, and industry partners in the area.
What’s new and different about this piece of work?
As practice-based research, this way of working had the ability to not essentialize issues or distil them, but rather the social complex formulations of ‘history’ and ‘culture’ and how they are enacted in living, embodied actions. As such, it didn’t just report facts and figures, but instigated new ways of thinking about these Highland Clearances.
How was/is it carried out?
Several events were developed with the village, including a re-staging of the 200th anniversary of the Kildonan Riots (the resistance to the Highland Clearances) with the village, as well as discussion events, activities and actions. The research culminated in a Shinty match (A highland sport) between ‘locals’ and ‘incomers’ to act as metaphors for the contemporary ‘Highland Clearances’ as well as to encourage discourse between disparate groups (the Locals and the Incoming residents) thereby fostering dialogue and relationships via a ‘staged’ conflict.
Who has it benefitted and how? (ie what difference has it made? Add quotes from participants)
Several events within the village explicitly explored how the museum– the largest employee during the summer months and the biggest cultural force – unintentionally framed and aligned itself to certain historical and cultural ideologies. These revealed how it might unintentionally exclude members of the small, close-knit community. It therefore benefitted the museum in giving it the opportunity to re-think its approach and how it might act to be more inclusive.
For most of the villages, the dialogical projects allowed them to assess and examine their assumptions about the formation of culture and history and how they might take an active approach in these, finding ways to frame their own destiny which has been built from a more complex understanding of its past.
Feedback from participants (what they like about the approach)
As active events, most of the villages appreciated taking the traditionally dry and didactic history/heritage discussions out into lived, dialogic frameworks. Providing the opportunity for people who do not normally speak to each other to come together – even if it is to find points to disagree upon – seemed to have an incredibly productive impact to the village.
What are the challenges?
As an ‘practice-based’ arts research project, it is difficult to explain exactly what is occurring and why to people. Often described as ‘theory-in-action’ this type of research is often difficult to explain as it is not about ‘finding a positivist answer’ or even ‘gathering information’ but rather a process in-and-of itself. It provides an alternative insight into not only gathering information, but further ways of exploring how we are the world. This process, however, is often uncomfortable for people to go through, albeit vitally important.
What are the successes?
This challenges listed above lead directly to its successes, which came in the form of active participation in both the debates/dialogues that were initiated by the project, but also in the form of the significant numbers of the small village willing to enter into the discussions we developed. Nearly the entire population of the village engaged at some point of the 6 month project.
What are the impacts?
The Timespan Musuem and Gallery have reassessed their relationships with their communities and continue to develop conversational events that emerged out of these conversations and dialogues set up by this project. The villagers feel more comfortable about addressing the Highland Clearances as less ‘fixed historical events’ but more ‘cultural touchstones’ and therefore are able to develop dialogue between and through the differences held about them in the village.
What’s next for this study?
The role of the Highland Clearances in the Scottish Highland psyche is obviously quite significant. While this project was a temporary exploration into cultural activities, we feel the processes developed on this project – productive conflictual conversations – are applicable in other contexts, providing the opportunity to roll these methodologies in other communities facing tensions.
Lessons learnt (including, things you would do again, things you’d not, things you’d do differently)
People are willing and excited to talk about things that might seem difficult or problematic: providing a forum for these complex issues is not only welcomed, but necessary within communities.
Include links to research papers/press coverage/conferences
http://www.anthonyschrag.com/pages/Physical-shinty.html
Contact details for further information
