Category: Research

Island Voices through Indian Languages

~ Gordon Wells ~ Leave a comment

Indian Languages Poster Picture FinalSelect any language in this landscape poster, or use the phone-friendly portrait layout.

The Children’s Parliament concept was first developed to scale in Rajasthan by India’s world-famous Barefoot College. UNESCO documented some of this fascinating history-in-the-making in video form. A similar idea was later tried out in the Outer Hebrides by the Scottish Children’s Parliament organisation, which continues to work across the country to this day.

Around the time of the Children’s Parliament in Uist and Barra project, Island Voices was already developing its interest in community-based Language Capture and Curation on a shareable human scale, so recording this meeting of the Children’s Parliament in Barra (as well as the follow-up in Benbecula) was a natural step to take, with versions in both Gaelic and English included under the Series 2 Generations theme.

Following years of grounded Hebridean growth and developing partnerships, Island Voices came to Indian linguistic attention through the Mediating Multilingualism collaboration between the UHI Language Sciences Institute and AUH Centre for Linguistic Studies, serviced initially through the Soillse network and continued now by CIALL. This work has been generously supported by the Scottish Funding Council, and publicised through their EDI blog.

This brings us up to the present day, and this testing at scale of the notion that short documentary films with a focus on localised linguistic communities can be both easily and usefully re-purposed in other languages in which similar issues around contact, use, and sustainability may also be pertinent. We’ve been doing it off and on in ones and twos for a while through our Other Tongues theme. Moving in one go from two versions of one film to fifteen is a significant step-change!

The image at the top of this post, available in landscape or portrait layout, supplies live links to the film in each of the languages listed, as well as to relevant websites of the partners mentioned. Alternatively, you can just click on any of the language names in the top row of the tables below to get straight through to the YouTube version of your choice.

অসমীয়া বাংলা ગુજરાતી हिंदी ಕನ್ನಡ
Assamese Bangla Gujarati Hindi Kannada
कोंकणी मैथिली മലയാളം मराठी नेपाली
Konkani Maithili Malayalam Marathi Nepali
ଓଡିଆ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ తెలుగు English Gàidhlig
Odia Punjabi Telugu English Gaelic

(The English name of the language in the second row is a live link you can click to get to the Clilstore unit, in which the online transcript – with the video embedded – enables one-click access to an online dictionary for any words you don’t know.)

We are particularly indebted to Adhibhash for their vital work in recruiting and co-ordinating a wonderful team of translators and narrators who worked at pace to deliver these great new recordings!

The primary aim for Mediating Multilingualism was to deliver innovative and collaborative work of genuine value for partners outside Scotland. We have continued in that spirit, while recognising also the mutual benefit derived. It will not have escaped local notice that several of the languages listed above, notably Punjabi, as well as Bangla and Gujarati, are widely spoken (and taught to some degree) in “diaspora” communities here, while Hindi (or Urdu) may still serve as a link between speakers of different South Asian languages in the UK.

And as we, in Scotland, continue to struggle at community level to develop an equitable working relationship between English and Gaelic which would enable both to be fruitfully used, we might do well to remind ourselves that other countries appear to handle regional linguistic variation of far greater complexity. India has 22 scheduled languages written in to its constitution, including all those on our list above, mostly associated with different regions or states. It’s a longstanding example of differential recognition of, and official support for, local languages across multiple regions within one overall polity, as well as some which cross international boundaries. If there’s truly a mind for it, is it really beyond Scotland’s wit to meaningfully recognise “Areas of Linguistic Significance” for Gaelic within its own borders?

Returning to the Indian context and the Barefoot College, they had their own 50th anniversary celebrations in 2022. If you follow this video news report, at 11.36 you can find an interesting alternative take on literacy and education from founder Bunker Roy, in terms that again chime nicely with the Island Voices focus on the Primacy of Speech:

“Illiteracy is not a barrier for anyone to become a barefoot engineer, communicator, designer, architect… We have learnt that there’s a big difference between literacy and education. Literacy is what you learn to read and write. Education is what you get from your family environment, and your community. So our stress at the Barefoot College has always been on education. Literacy may be there, but it’s incidental for me. What is more important is the human being behind – the person who is working with us. Has he or she got the compassion, patience, tolerance, simplicity? All these are Gandhian values, which we think should set an example for anyone working in the college…”

This may be considered a simple statement of fundamental principles. But it is also perhaps another reason, alongside the recently cited example of Duncan Ban MacIntyre, to recognise anew the importance of natural speech in a community setting as the crucial ingredient in any attempt at creating a definitive recipe for promoting genuinely communicative use of any language, no matter what its circumstances. That said, none of the newly added languages here could be considered at risk of disuse in the way Gaelic is, except perhaps in diaspora contexts. But if the Island Voices home-grown and “haund-knitted” (may we call it “barefoot”?) capture and curation model works for these, could it not also be applied with other indigenous and endangered languages, whether in India, Scotland, or elsewhere?

“Baile m’ àraich” – Catrìona Dhuirl

~ Gordon Wells ~ Leave a comment

CatrionaDhuirlClilstorepic

Island Voices re-posts another video from Comann Eachdraidh Sgìre a’ Bhac on the Clilstore platform, as part of the University of the Highlands and Islands CIALL initiative.

“Coinneach visited Catriona MacCarthur (Catriona Dhuirl), who is in her 90s, although she certainly doesn’t look it. She recalls the days of her youth and being brought up in Coll, reminiscing about people and pastimes, community life and some of the effects which WWII had on her generation.”

You can watch the video while reading the wordlinked transcript in this Clilstore unit: https://clilstore.eu/cs/11854

Donnie Macaulay – Sgìre a’ Bhac

~ Gordon Wells ~ 1 Comment

Donnie Macaulay Sgìre a' Bhac

March opens with the further extension of our CIALL-supported collaborative work with Comann Eachdraidh Sgìre a’ Bhac through the creation of another wordlinked transcript on the Clilstore platform, this time based on their video of Coinneach MacÌomhair in conversation with Donnie Macaulay. Donnie Macaulay is the son of the late Rev Murdo Macaulay, who was the minister of Back Free Church between 1956 and 1975.

It’s another fascinating recording of naturally spoken Gaelic, full of stories and treasured reminiscences. And now the Clilstore treatment offers enhanced access to Gaelic learners, and any others who may also like to see written Gaelic alongside the spoken word.

Here’s the link: https://clilstore.eu/cs/11851

Back School Memories

~ Gordon Wells ~ 1 Comment

SchoolMemories

We’ve previously drawn attention to some of the fascinating YouTube videos coming out of Comann Eachdraidh Sgìre Bhac, and to the fact that a number of the Gaelic ones have now been enhanced with optional same language subtitling (which can also be auto-translated into numerous other languages, including English).

Of course, once the subtitling has been done, that also forms a base on which other platforms can be built – such as a learner-friendly “Clilstore” unit. This is an online tool which creates a new webpage with the video embedded alongside a scrollable text, so you can look at and listen to the video while at the same time following the transcript in real time. Plus, there’s a special trick which allows learners to click on any word they don’t know and immediately gain access to a dictionary translation of it.

So here, with support from the University of the Highlands and Islands’ “CIALL” initiative, is another example of the Clilstore software being put to use with a community-produced recording about School Memories from Sgoil a’ Bhac, with Coinneach MacÌomhair in conversation with some of his former classmates.

Clilstore Unit 11818 – “School Memories”: https://clilstore.eu/cs/11818

Scottish Studies goes fully online

~ Gordon Wells ~ Leave a comment

Scottish Studies coverThere are numerous points of interest in the newly published Volume 40 – the 2024 issue – of “Scottish Studies”. Notably, this open access journal of the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh has now gone fully online. Virginia Blankenhorn, the editor, gives a good account of the various reasons why this makes sense: 

“In addition to saving trees, there are considerable advantages to online publication which we believe more than compensate for the lack of a printed volume. First and foremost, reduced costs will make it possible to publish more frequently – at least once every eighteen months to start with. Second, digital publication will allow easy access from the content of an article to other online resources. An author writing about song, for example, will be able to supply hyperlinks to sung performances available online, thereby allowing readers to hear the songs themselves – a gift to readers unable to read musical notation, and an added benefit to those who do, but who understand how much information such notation typically leaves out. Finally – and, as editor, I deeply appreciate this feature – digital publication will allow errors to be easily and silently corrected as soon as eagle-eyed readers point them out.”

From the Island Voices standpoint, the point about the multimedia affordances of online publication makes particularly good sense, supporting our consistent stance on the primacy of speech. The notation of language, as with music, is an often inadequate and only approximate substitute for the real thing!

So we are, of course, doubly delighted that Virginia also found space for an interview with Gordon Wells about the Island Voices project in a piece on “Digital Developments in Scottish Studies“, alongside parallel contributions from Will Lamb (Edinburgh) and Natasha Sumner (Harvard). Okay, it’s presented here in written format – but with plenty of live links and URLs in the footnotes. Ceum air cheum…!

Scottish Studies Intro shot 2

Our hearty thanks are due to the journal and its editor for finding a space for Guthan nan Eilean in the world of Scottish Studies!

Talk on Minority Language Protection

~ Gordon Wells ~ 1 Comment

Poster for CÓG talk for HARC and CIALL“Coherent language protection and promotion initiatives are of vital relevance to minority-language survival. Whilst economic, geographic, demographic, and socio-political factors are crucial to successful language protection and promotion at a macro level, positive factors influencing the primary aspects of language vitality, i.e., acquisition, socialisation, ethnolinguistic identity, and praxis, are crucial at a micro level.

This paper aims to present a new conceptual framework by which we can interpret the various social elements contributing to minority-language social dynamics. Four phases of socialisation (primary, secondary, civic reinforcement, and processes of collective coherence) are indicated in the social dynamic, and the influence and interaction of key groups of social participants (identified as minority; majoritarian; tangential and neo-cultures) on the outplay of the dynamic in society are demonstrated. The analysis underlying this new conceptualisation examines: a) the implications of minority-language promotion with insufficient language protection, and b) the influence of the minority-language policy and planning framework on the social dynamics of the minority group. It is contended in the paper that minority language protection is more likely to be successful when it adequately aligns and addresses the core aspects of the actual reality of minority social dynamics.”

You can click on the poster above to find live links for this talk by the Director of the UHI Language Sciences institute, or join here.

UPDATE: The recording of the talk is now available via the news page of the Language Sciences Institute: Talk on Minority Language Protection.

Retro Retrieval

~ Gordon Wells ~ Leave a comment

Nicosia video makers

We’ll continue our review of previous Gaelic recordings into the winter months, given the popularity of our autumn social media season. But we’re going to start the New Year with something a little bit different – and warmer – while sticking with the Gaelic unifying theme. We’ll kick off with some earlier films made “in the style of” or “about” Island Voices, before returning to more classics from the original series.

Island Voices in fact owes its inception to the stimulus provided by the EU’s Leonardo funded POOLS project of 2005-2007. It was through that successful partnership that the Guthan nan Eilean idea came into being – and won the 2007 European Language Label. POOLS turned out to be just the first of many follow-up projects that built on the original theme, with Island Voices linked to many of them.

POOLS-2 (2009-2011) was an early example, again with a video production element included, which enabled us to link with other European islands like Cyprus and Malta. In these demo clips from a 2010 video workshop in Nicosia, the fundamental learning point is made that serviceable video-making need not be the exclusive preserve of industry professionals. And in language teaching terms, it can be a highly productive process, with multilingual knock-on benefits potentially within reach in return for the initial creative input.

These videos were put together as a demo for language teachers interested in the use of ICT in language teaching. Participants spent a morning taking pictures. The following day, after pooling their resources, they each edited together their own short film, using this demo as an exemplar.

They were recently “rediscovered”, and the Gaelic version has now been additionally equipped with the learning assisting enhancements that have since become available – including the now standard Clilstore transcript (Unit 11794), plus optional YouTube subtitles (that can further be auto-translated through the Settings Wheel).

A bheil Portagailis agad, neo am bu toil leat beagan ionnsachadh?!

Tionndadh Gàidhlig:

English version:

We’ll place direct YouTube links to more Gaelic films on a similar outward-looking and multilingual theme on Facebook and Twitter in days to come…

Island Voices “make sense”

~ Gordon Wells ~ 2 Comments

CIALL banner logo

As we move from 2023 to 2024, Island Voices’ “coming of age” since the project was first mooted 18 years ago in 2005 has already been marked. Followers on Facebook or Twitter will also have noticed our recent “autumn season” of retrospective re-postings of some of our earlier videos from the original Series One and Two. It’s been heartening to see the sudden bursts in YouTube metrics as we re-draw attention to examples of our earliest work, peaking with close to 1200 hits in one single day in November.

A quick analysis of Facebook “likes” (including other positive reactions) may also be instructive, for example in comparing the sixteen videos that form the Gaelic section of Series Two Outdoors, as each was separately highlighted from 2nd November into early December. With overall positive reactions just on our own page totalling over 1,000 during this period – averaging about 63 per video – there was an interesting split between the introductory “teacher talk” documentaries and the “authentic speech” interviews with community members. The documentaries averaged 35 “likes” whereas the interviews pulled in over a mean 79 per video, with the top three scoring 253, 197, and 97 positive reactions respectively, all with senior community members who, sadly, have now passed on since making their recordings.

In a previous (2020) post on “Gaelic virality” we compared hit rates on WordPress, following Facebook shares, between local Hebridean and more widely dispersed Gaelic interest groups (including learners). But this time we simply posted directly on our own Facebook page and shared just with the Scottish Gaelic Duolingo page in each case. It’s a matter of some interest, even with this narrower sharing strategy, that the top three most actively liked interviews were with older generation speakers, who themselves received relatively little schooling but acquired their Gaelic through community transmission. This comparative popularity makes perfect sense when aligned with academic findings which favour a “retro-vernacular” model for language analysis and indeed teaching purposes.

So, moving into 2024 the project remains firmly committed to its strong Gaelic community focus. And, while the former link to Sabhal Mòr Ostaig is now dissolved, following the closure of Soillse, we maintain academic relationships, particularly with the UHI Language Sciences Institute, through co-operation with its CIALL project (Collaborative, Interdisciplinary & Applied Linguistic Links). This will enable us to keep on supporting existing Gaelic-related work at community level (such as the Aire air Sunnd wellbeing project with Comann Eachdraidh Uibhist a Tuath) and explore new recording avenues too (for example in relation to Taighean Tughaidh with Cnoc Soilleir and UHI archaeological colleagues).

Taigh Nèill

Tommy Macdonald (centre-right) shows the ruin of Neil Maceachan’s house to UHI researchers

At the same time, we look forward to further developing our wider mutually supportive links with Other Tongues beyond our Hebridean shores, for example in other Scottish island chains, or indeed in other maritime areas, whether Mediterranean or Caribbean… Watch this space!

Back in 2005 Island Voices started off with a specific language teaching focus which later widened out. CIALL, by contrast, set out a broader vision from the start when developing its working rationale in 2023, stressing the importance of language use outside formal learning contexts. Here’s a key section:

‘The reality of the ever-growing global Language Shift phenomenon is that speakers of a threatened language switch to another one for societally conditioned reasons other than declining linguistic competence alone. It follows that responses which focus on formal, largely ab initio language learning without addressing broader issues around constricted language use outside the classroom cannot by themselves adequately slow the impetus towards continued and eventually completed shift. A holed bucket, if not repaired, will always empty, no matter how much fresh water is poured in.’

As a “language capture and curation” project Island Voices has always sought to present the snatches of speech it records in a firmly grounded social and community context. We certainly don’t claim to supply all the necessary patches to properly staunch the ongoing decline in the use of Gaelic, or any other language, but the CIALL critique above sits nicely with the Island Voices mission and points to a shared agenda – for 2024 and beyond – that can contribute to that cause.

To borrow a phrase: “Tha sin a’ dèanamh ciall!”

Gur math a thèid leinn uile sa bhliadhn’ ùr.

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.