Author: Gordon Wells

CEUT Reflections 3

~ Gordon Wells ~ Leave a comment

Here’s the third of our series of blogposts by Mary Morrison in which she reflects on the Aire Air Sunnd project led by Comann Eachdraidh Uibhist a Tuath. As with her previous posts comments are welcome!

Sgoil Chàirinis

Mary writes:

Ar n-àite. What role can CEUT play in the current funding desert?

Latha math a h-uile duine.

A disclaimer. The ideas I will try to put down here are my own and are biased, so please do not take this rant as reflecting the CEUT Board’s thinking in any way.

Why are some small charities on North Uist finding it so hard to get funding?  Although the island has been gifted generously for the new pier and the promised ferry, our island infrastructure and offer to visitors sorely needs further support, if North Uist is not to remain a one-day wonder, to be travelled through, with visitors missing the many ways they might explore our unique heritage and environment.  Are our several volunteer-run small, but excellent organisations to remain the Cinderellas at the ball? Comann Eachdraidh Uibhist a Tuath, despite our recent Levelling Up and Regeneration Fund setbacks, are more determined than ever to refurbish Sgoil Chàirinis and bring our collections home from Benbecula, however gradually!

CEUT’s vision for Sgoil Chàirinis is:

  • A welcoming space anchored in the community to meet the needs of old, young and isolated alike.
  • Learning from our heritage and island environment to move forward sustainably into the future using our tangible and intangible resources.
  • Supporting the roots of Gaelic language and expression in a community with Gaelic at its heart.

Maybe one reason for our apparent invisibility on the funding scene could be that CEUT has not featured or been included in any of the more centralised and prestigious schemes such as the Islands Fund, or the Great Place Scheme? In turn, could this invisibility also be due to the centralised perceptions so apparent in the Scottish Government’s Culture Strategy, (2020)? In this document heritage briefly appears almost as an afterthought, as an extra, a bit player, on the stage of Art? It appears to recognise ‘each community’s own local culture in generating a distinct sense of place, identity and confidence’ and states, ‘place, -community, landscape, language and geography – is important and reflects the creativity of the past and provides inspiration for the cultural expression today’. This definition seems to downplay the powerful and active connections that the unique lived experiences of the past and their representations offer to our communal learning, resilience and ‘ways of being’ today.

According to more recent National Heritage Lottery Fund guidelines, their emphasis has now shifted: promote inclusion and involve a wider range of people (a mandatory outcome), boost the local economy, encourage skills development and job creation, support wellbeing, create better places to live, work and visit and improve the resilience of organisations working in heritage. The economic inferences here are clear.

Sgoil Chàirinis is perfectly positioned on the main road, a natural stopping off and resting place on the Hebridean Way, close to Teampull na Trìonaid, and a natural gateway to North Uist and its tangible and intangible riches. The school, familiar and treasured by so many local people, promises to be a very useful staging post, linking well with Taigh Chearsabhagh and our Museum there. (CEUT’s purchase of the school was as a result of a planned extension beside the Museum, for which we were given Regeneration funding in 2015, being turned down at the planning stage because of the increasing flood risk.)

We have been continuously supported through our travails by Museums Galleries Scotland as an Accredited Museum. We are very grateful to them for keeping us afloat, especially recently with their Resilience Funding, which has helped us to hang on by our fingernails to keep Sgoil Chàirinis. Miraculous really. MGS have also been central in funding our digital archiving work. The Association of Independent Museums have supported our important links with Barbados Museum by funding research and our teenagers’ films where Feasgar Diluain have recorded storytellers and their seanchas.

A major funder recently has been the British Science Association and the Wellcome Trust through the Ideas Fund. This Fund is breaking exciting new ground by encouraging researchers to work collaboratively with communities on wellbeing projects which equally benefit both organisations. Our aims, in looking at what research can bring to  our practice, and analysing in what ways heritage promotes wellbeing are:

  • Learn how our current wellbeing activities can be improved by working with health partners through heritage – Aberdeen University
  • Discover how recent research into the community use of the Gaelic language can enrich our Gaelic activities – Language Sciences Institute, UHI
  • Explore how digital activities can contribute to our local sense of place, value, identity, and wellbeing. St Andrews University, (Phase 1)
  • Look at how the community can use these pilot studies to shape the development of Sgoil Chàrinis

In the New Year we are hoping to invite other small local charities to see what benefits we can all bring to each other by planning together how we can support each other, rather than by working in isolation. We are also planning to gather more evidence using the themes that emerged from our members’ survey this year, by holding a series of wellbeing reminiscence workshops, short interactive talks and open activities afternoons on Tuesdays, headed up and inspired by the very successful volunteer-led, monthly ‘Cupan’ sessions. Through February and March we will hold our family, pop-up Gaelic cafés on Saturday mornings, with a beginners’ table and other exciting Gaelic activities.

Ideas about who and what Museums were founded for are undergoing rapid changes – the premises on which the authoritative, ‘traditional’ museum, with its exhibits fossilised in glass cases within its walls, are being questioned.  Re-interpretation of what kinds of sites these should become, how they can widen their inclusivity and operations within their local environment and beyond, becoming sites of ‘social conscience’ is foremost in these discussions. bell hooks – deliberately spelt lowercase – wrote that ‘to be truly free, we must dare to create lives of sustained, optimal wellbeing and joy’. Let’s go for it?

CEUT Reflections 2

~ Gordon Wells ~ Leave a comment

Here’s the second of our series of blogposts by Mary Morrison in which she reflects on the Aire Air Sunnd project led by Comann Eachdraidh Uibhist a Tuath. As with her previous post comments are welcome!

DunAnSticirPic

Picture – Vanessa Langley: Gaelic heritage walk to Dùn an Sticir

Mary writes:

Pool of scattered thoughts – The Feedback Imperative. 

The organiser’s bane, the participants’ nightmare and the funders’ staple diet.

When, however, that feedback comes in the form of a poem, reflecting on CEUT’s Gaelic heritage walks and summer festival, such creative ‘evaluation’ from a participant can be astonishing, rewarding and moving.

A BLESSING

A blessing to walk this green land
with its flowers,
yellow and purple.
To learn is history
ancient and old.

A blessing to hear tales from people
whose ancestors roamed here,
Interesting stories from a land
surrounded by white sands
and the wild waves of its light blue sea.

A blessing to learn the language
amid strawberries and cherries
biscuits and tea.
A language familiar
but also unfamiliar.

Meleri, thank you for your inspirational writing.

(By the way, the strawberries and cherries were not growing on the machair, but shop bought, to put on the tables at Sgoil Chàirinis during our wellbeing afternoons!)

We are always glad for Comann Eachdraidh Uibhist a Tuath to get any feedback about our funded activities, but a gift, such as this poem, is a lasting treasure for those darker moments in voluntary organisations.  Any volunteer feels some guilt and embarrassment when imposing the feedback chore on participants in their activities; it’s as if you are coercing guests at a meal to try out one more helping, one cake too many? And it’s always hard to know the best way to do this. Recently, because it was mostly too windy to hand out the prepared slips of paper, or to expect responses on the spot, we sent a ‘no pressure’ email after each of CEUT’s four Gaelic heritage walks, leaving it open for people to reply – a method that evoked only a few written responses. However those who did reply astonished us with their creative, thorough and honest reflections.

We  sent out fifty emails to those who had joined  one or more of our walks, as follows: If you have time, you might like to reflect on how you felt about the walk. Here are some prompts you can use:

  • What part or aspect of the walk did you enjoy most – and why?
  • Did you learn anything new on the walk?
  • How important  is it to use the Gaelic place names and related stories ?
  • Should CEUT provide more of these walks?
  • Do any special feelings on or after the walk come to mind?

If you have any photos, writing, or art work inspired by the walk please feel free to share these.

Many of you sent in your telling and expert photographs; we have archived these as your active testimonies to the walks. Taing mhòr.

One of the written reflections  came from an enterprising cyclist, Janey, who had come to the island from New Zealand on an international cyclists exchange scheme. (A scheme where you stay free with a host for six weeks, provided you work in the house or garden for four hours a day, and try not to use any public transport other than ferries or trains for longer journeys.)

We have learnt a lot from her detailed and constructive email – thank you Janey! Thanks too for your shock on another occasion. You pointed out that in New Zealand everyone brings her/his own cup to gatherings to conserve energy, time and the planet. Right now, at Sgoil Chàirinis, CEUT doesn’t make people bring their own cup with them, but your observation is timely – we do need to think about reducing waste and energy wherever possible!

You then alerted us to the ‘www.ebi’ method of getting feedback, ‘what worked well, even better if’ and pointed out that this wasn’t part of what we had asked for. It should have been; thank you – we will make sure we use this, and will be reminded of you, in future.

Under that heading you gave us some excellent pointers for the future:

  • a very brief round of everyone at the beginning before setting off – who/ from where/ historical connections to this area/ what, if anything, is your particular interest in the history of this area? This would have helped me connect more easily with others during the walk. 
  • I’d have enjoyed a very brief teaching of one (Gaelic) phrase, each time and be encouraged to practice this with others as we walk. This would bring the language alive for me and add an element of fun and connection with others. 
  • I’m curious if the locals’ stories that people share of their history get recorded anywhere. (Perhaps a ‘scribe’ could be appointed at each walk so that this information becomes part of the next newsletter?) The sharing and gathering of these local stories seems an important element in building this group. 
  • I would enjoy being offered the chance to bring a thermos and biscuits and take a 10 minute break half way through the walk shared with others – to me sharing food together builds community

Well, I immediately realised that one of the new features we had tried to build into the walks, (a QR code to scan, to provide an information sheet and a contact email for further details), didn’t seem to have worked very effectively. Was it the unfamiliarity of such technical methods, the poor connectivity on the islands, or had we not provided enough information on the posters? How can we do this better next time?

Weather permitting, the idea of ‘sharing’ a snack seems a great idea! We encourage everyone on the handouts, (that didn’t connect this time), to bring these, but marking out a ‘Janey’ spot will become a feature of these walks in future.

We must also try to be more aware of the ways in which we can build in further inclusiveness; firming up the pre-walk contacting, information and introductions will be essential next time.

Other responses to our questions may have suggested that we only wanted to hear about what worked well? Finding better ways of teasing out what we can do better, so as to guard against being too celebratory, inviting non-critical evaluation will shape our next steps. An area to explore further with our research  partners.

We will, however look at some of the celebratory vignettes, drawn from five emails, under the questions we posed for the meaning they convey:

  • What part or aspect of the walk did you enjoy most- and why?

– the part I enjoyed most about the walk was hearing different people’s stories adding and enhancing the basic history of each site – my sense this group could be reframed as a ‘History Club’ – that was how it came across to me – the informality, friendliness and shared contribution was welcome; I was expecting the stuffiness and hierarchical nature of a ‘society’! – North Uist itself is so full of the ruins of human habitation, you are literally tripping over them, and I started to see every mound and rock as something possibly archaeological!

  • Did you learn anything new on the walk?

I valued the chance to hear about local history from those with ‘lived experience’

I learnt so much more about the Teampull, its history over such a long period of time, the people that have stood on the same piece of earth I was standing on!

From Neolithic to the more modern (Vallay House), we can see that humans are transitory in the landscape but leave their mark, we are tiny and nature is so much bigger than us. Emphasises we are as humans the same, despite what age we live in.

  • How important is it to use the Gaelic place names and related stories?

I cannot stress enough the importance of using Gaelic names and related stories, after all that is what they are. I may not understand the language, but it means so much to me to get a full and complete picture to immerse myself in. It feels rounded and whole by being true to the Gaelic language.

I valued the Scots Gaelic being spoken and the way you introduced it as important for community.

Wonderful to learn and hear Gaelic spoken.

  • Should CEUT provide more of these walks?

What you are doing is so good, please keep on with walks/feedback as I think they are invaluable.

Thank you for organising these wonderful and interesting walks. So very glad I came across them.

  • Do any special feelings on or after the walk come to mind?

I felt joy in having knowledge of the (Priest’s) Stone to feedback to my host in Middlequarter as well as to other locals. None of them previously knew of the stone and its significance.

Afterwards I have been left thinking how everyday life would have been for those living within the place over all the centuries. How somewhere so quiet and beautiful was the setting of such a gruesome battle (Ditch of Blood) and the dichotomy of that. The graves, the oldest I found being hand carved and beautiful (so much effort and care), the most recent the war grave of 17 year old A Macauley (what a serene place for him to rest, so young, so sad).

p.s. I will follow on with more photos, can only do a few at a time!

The detail here is imaginative and expressive. These visitors captured eloquently, as the poem did, how allowing the Gaelic storytelling breaks, whilst exploring the sites we visited, gave walkers time to enter and reimagine our Gaelic past.

So we need from our researchers how best to turn these reflections into evidence for our funders? In what ways can we articulate how our Gaelic walks to heritage sites help community wellbeing? Do we really need to quantify experiences that seem to be unique to each walker for any evaluation to count as valid?

This blogging cailleach, in inviting these responses, was reminded to look up a quotation from her PGCE days, which had served her well, both to inspire writing in the classroom and, at times, to resolve conflicts within and without it:

Everyone sees a different moving picture of an event in which all are involved.

There are differences in interpretation and disagreement about what actually happened, but these are not necessarily right or wrong. The accounts differ because we all played a different part in the same ball game. Shipman, 1974.

CEUT Reflections 1

~ Gordon Wells ~ 2 Comments

Here at Island Voices/Guthan nan Eilean we’re delighted to host a first blogpost from Mary Morrison, the co-ordinator and guiding light at Comann Eachdraidh Uibhist a Tuath (CEUT) for the “Aire air Sunnd” wellbeing project, supported by the Ideas Fund. And we look forward to further contributions!

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Picture: Intergenerational walkers and talkers exploring Gaelic heritage between Barpa Langais and Pobul Fhinn as part of the Aire air Sunnd “Fèis Shamhraidh” (summer festival)

Mary writes:

My first post – latha math a h-uile duine!

This is the first attempt at a blogpost – a way of trying to convey what’s happening in our ‘Aire air Sunnd’ project, (Attention to Cheerfulness), from the CEUT co-ordinating perspective. Over the past eighteen months I have been trying to make sense of some ideas that have been buzzing at the edges of my mind, and coming very gradually to understand the areas we need to discuss where we as a project might go next; (I think it was poet Marianne Moore who said, ‘Thought collects in pools’).

We are hoping that North Uist friends and relations will join in these ‘citizen science’ conversations and help push our community’s (or communities’) ideas further. Particularly we need to work out how the project findings can help, first practically, in raising funding to refurbish Sgoil Chàirinis, and second, in gathering evidence convincing enough to make our voices challenge and reverberate at local and national public policy levels.

During a recent recorded forum between Comann Eachdraidh Uibhist a Tuath and our three university research partners, Iain Campbell from the Language Sciences Institute, University of the Highlands and Islands, asked three provocative questions, which I paraphrase as  ‘how do you define a single community, how could such a community be said to be representative and how could it develop agency, make its voice heard in places of power, to make a difference?

Suddenly Iain had provided a scaffold for my scattered reflections – thank you, Iain.

Our small CEUT wellbeing group, facilitated by Jess Wood (working with Heather Morgan of Aberdeen University’s Applied Health Sciences department), met for a series of workshops last year. An open call to CEUT members resulted in ten of us gathering at Sgoil Chàirinis, where we were encouraged by Jess to figure out which aspects of local heritage and wellbeing mattered most to us. We were a mix of long term Gaelic speaking Uisteachs, Uist returners and some who had chosen to settle here and had lived here for over twelve years, with all of us acknowledging the Gaelic language as the pulse or heartbeat of our small, remote island community.

‘The assimilation of traditional communities is not a simple matter of painlessly extracting one language and culture and transplanting in an inherently superior replacement; the process can induce breaks in generations between families, discontinuities in a community’s sense of place and self-confidence and fractures in a person’s identity….’ (Michael Newton, Warriors of the Word)

What seemed to matter most to our group at its first workshop, in no order of preference, were:

  • Relationships
  • Community
  • Nature
  • Spirituality, (both faith-based and otherwise)
  • Heritage and Culture
  • Learning
  • Stories and Creativity

Working alongside our researchers, we began the process of constructing a survey of our members last winter, to learn more about how these choices can support our communities’ wellbeing, especially after the wearisomely long and anxious period of the pandemic. (CEUT had already recorded aspects of the resilience of different age groups across the island during this period). It was interesting to see and archive, at the end of 2021, how much comfort our community had found in ‘closer family relationships’, the ‘local environment’, and ‘being creative’ as ways of overcoming the isolation and potential loneliness of lockdown.

The main highlights of the Aire air Sunnd survey findings were:

  • the striking importance of community in island life – a major asset
  • concern that North Uist was not being consulted or heard locally or nationally
  • concern relating to the rapid decline in awareness of the distinctiveness of North Uist’s heritage, culture and, in particular, Gaelic language
  • concern about the environment, coastal erosion, loss of biodiversity
  • the commitment of the local community to developing Sgoil Chàirinis
  • support for Gaelic, heritage and wellbeing activities and events in the school
  • support for Gaelic classes and activities that support natural and cultural heritage
  • the use of digital technology for heritage and culture preservation and transmission, with the caveat that individual support with accessing digital technology is a clear need.

Perhaps the time has come now for CEUT:

  • to make use of these findings to recognise our assets and build on these for ourselves? Take more control of this project, so we can spend the remaining months teasing out ‘how’ and ‘why’ these priorities matter so much, learning alongside our research partners how to translate these into compelling arguments?
  • to work out how we can develop confidence in our own sense of agency – what changes can the project evidence achieve for CEUT – how remote is our heritage, (its unique environment, language, culture of resilience) to the dominant discussions in the seats of power?
  • to present our findings in such a way that our welcoming and inclusive Gaelic heritage, and the crucial part this plays in the island’s wellbeing will be better promoted and recognised at local and national levels.

The recently revived Horizon programme, (previously denied to British citizens post-Brexit, but still a major plank supporting the EU’s academic programmes), defines co-creation as ‘a guarantee of the growth of citizen science and innovation in providing public services’. In this project we, CEUT, as the instigators and funded body, acknowledge that it has taken us time to recognise our assets, the importance of our local language and traditional cultural knowledge, as we have worked alongside our researchers. It is imperative now to build on these strengths, resisting any attempts to ‘colonise’ us in ways that do not result in mutual benefits to researchers and CEUT alike. CEUT also needs to find routes for our endeavours to connect with and influence public services. Dr Victoria Rawlings, in her co-authored publication, ‘Community-led research: Walking New Paths Together’, even suggests that ‘community-led research produces better quality research, a better, more fulfilling experience for its participants and more reliable research outcomes’.

We need to gather evidence of what works well locally, for whom, in what settings/contexts and how these can best be supported in such parlous times of fiscal, social and planetary challenge.

Please join in this community discussion!  Do add your thoughts, the more random the more inspirational!

Mary Morrison

Comments welcome!

Comments are welcome, here on this blogpost, or perhaps on the CEUT or Island Voices Facebook pages or Twitter feeds if that’s where you see it first. All platforms will be monitored and all contributions valued!

Back Community Playlist

~ Gordon Wells ~ 1 Comment

CEBac playlistComann Eachdraidh Sgìre Bhac have been busy recently, placing translatable subtitles on more of their videos. It’s only a year since the first one went up – A Tour of Upper Coll/Cuairt Chuil Uaraich – with Coinneach MacÌomhair and Maighread Stiùbhart.

Now, with the help of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar and the Western Isles Development Trust, student placement Ellie MacDonald has added another 8 videos to the subtitled archive. That’s a substantial piece of work which deserves hearty congratulations!

You can now view the “box set” in this dedicated playlist:

There are hours of fascinating discussion and reminiscence there. And learners or non-speakers of Gaelic can also follow the conversations with the help of the subtitles, not to mention the option of slowing down the speed of the video to help you catch what’s being said, using the YouTube Settings wheel.

Mealaibh ur naidheachd, a chàirdean!

Climate, Heritage, & Wellbeing Seminar

~ Gordon Wells ~ Leave a comment

In the second Aire Air Sunnd July webinar a fresh panel discusses “Climate Change, Heritage, and Wellbeing”. This follows on from the previous week’s discussion of the not unrelated topic of Mapping Placenames & Stories of North Uist.

Followers of Island Voices will recall that earlier discussion in the CEUT Gaelic group addressed the theme of coastal erosion in a historical context, with mentions of stories of the last person to walk from Heisgeir to North Uist as well as the no longer evident Baile Siar to the west of today’s Baile Sear. The retention of CEUT chair Uisdean Robertson on the panel from last week provides continuity in this regard, while project officer Sharon Pisani reprises the role of webinar chair.

AASClimateChange

Here’s some of the CEUT description of the webinar from their Facebook page:

“From the shores of North Uist to the tropics of Barbados and the arid landscapes of Somalia, the relentless grip of climate change threatens to erode not only our natural world but also the invaluable heritage that binds us. As rising sea levels and extreme weather events encroach upon our most cherished sites, it is a stark reminder that safeguarding our shared history is intertwined with preserving our planet’s delicate equilibrium….
Book your ticket on Eventbrite to receive the Zoom link:
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to discuss North Uist’s heritage and climate effects.”

North Uist Place-names Seminar

~ Gordon Wells ~ 1 Comment
AASPlacenames2
Comann Eachdraidh Uibhist a Tuath have announced the panellists for the upcoming Place-Names webinar on Tuesday, July 18th, who will share their insights and knowledge on Gaelic place names, culture, and community mapping.
The Panellists:
🔹 Julie Fowlis: Hebridean Musician, Singer, and Place-based Creator
🔹 Uisdean Robertson: Western Isles Councillor
🔹 Archie Campbell: Gaelic Tutor
🔹 Colin Mackenzie: Place-name Researcher
🔹 Chris Fleming: OpenStreetMap Contributor
CEUT also invite community members to submit questions related to Gaelic Place-names. This is your chance to have your queries answered by their expert panel. Drop your questions on the CEUT Facebook notice or in the comments below, and Island Voices will pass them on.

Book your ticket on Eventbrite to receive the Zoom link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/669312641127

Save the date and time: Tuesday, July 18th, 6.30 to 7.30pm.

Aire air Sunnd: Digital Support

~ Gordon Wells ~ Leave a comment

This week the St Andrews team of Alan Miller and Sharon Pisani completed the round-up and review of the Aire air Sunnd survey and activities, following on from Jess Wood and Gordon Wells. Their specific focus was on “Digital use and activities”, presented online again and available to view on YouTube.

These YouTube screenshots will give a quick impression of the range of topics covered: from digital accessibility in the North Uist community, through use of social media, special areas of interest such as Gaelic place names and climate change issues, and on to forthcoming events and ongoing needs – including further guidance on digital opportunities and potential.

Digital Access

Social Media

Placenames etc

community concerns

Digital support

The screenshots give a taste. The “full meal” is available here:

That’s the fourth video in the series of reports – all gathered together on this CEUT YouTube playlist:

Bye-bye Twitter widget!

~ Gordon Wells ~ Leave a comment

TwitterFeedIsland Voices is still on Twitter. You can follow us here.

But in the tech world relationships are moving on, such that Twitter and WordPress evidently no longer retain the same mutually supportive understanding they previously enjoyed.

So, rather than keep this strange new message in the Island Voices sidebar, we’ve decided to remove the link that would take you straight to our Twitter account, for the time being at least. Perhaps a new understanding will be reached in due course.

We’ll keep tweeting – and re-tweeting – in the meantime. If you don’t yet follow us on Twitter, you might like to take a look. The interests we share there are broader than just our own productions, while retaining a language and Hebridean focus – and a serenely cordial tone! 

Twitter banner

Recording Community Conversations

~ Gordon Wells ~ 1 Comment

AASReviewImageFollowing on from the North Uist “Wellbeing” survey, Gordon Wells this week reviewed the Island Voices contribution to the Aire air Sunnd project led by Comann Eachdraidh Uibhist a Tuath.

Adopting a slightly different format to Jess Wood’s presentations last week, Gordon speaks to camera on Zoom while screen-sharing key content from the Island Voices Aire air Sunnd webpage. Speaking in Gaelic he reinforces the point that using this language does not exclude non-speakers or early learners, given the multilingual technical resources that are now available online.

His video recaps the various recordings that have been created for the project in the past year or so, including the “Gaelic Crisis” presentation, and the Progress Report, as well as the recording sessions with community members covering storytelling, artefact description, and environmental issues. In so doing, it also shows how the YouTube subtitling and auto-translation functions can be put to effective use, and includes a quick demonstration of the Clilstore platform too, while emphasising the alternative effectiveness of recorded speech in a world where written communication is often taken for granted as the default norm.

Summing up, Gordon stresses the untapped value of various recording collections (in addition to Island Voices’ own), noting in particular how open resources such as Tobar an Dualchais have the potential to bring present and past communities together in a new manner to support North Uist cultural wellbeing, offering innovative ways of forward-looking engagement with the island’s Gaelic heritage so positively valued by all. At the same time, it needs to be recognised that community-wide engagement in such activity is dependent on community-wide comfort with the new digital tools that enable it. This is probably an area of work that needs closer attention.

Here’s Gordon’s talk on YouTube:

You can get a wordlinked transcript, with the video embedded, in this Clilstore unit: https://clilstore.eu/cs/11436