CEUT Reflections 4

2024-05-01 CEUT Reflections 4 ~ Gordon Wells ~ Leave a comment

Here’s the fourth of our series of blogposts by Mary Morrison, with help from Archie Campbell and Zsuzsanna Ihar, 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!

Mary writes:

Cafaidh Gàidhlig agus Feasgar Dimàirt.

‘Even the sheep and cows seemed to know who we were.’

During February and March the wellbeing and Gaelic groups have spent an interesting time sharing our thoughts about the place of North Uist, based on the key findings of the CEUT 2023 Community Survey. We have tried to explore further the unspoken, deeper meanings lying beneath our concerns, in order to provide more pressing evidence to convince potential funders of the urgency of our bids for the refurbishment of Sgoil Chàirinis, as a Gaelic, heritage and wellbeing community centre.

The common concern underlying these activities is our attempt to define CEUT’s role in so far as it may contribute to the local communities’ sense of wholeness, robustness and cheerfulness. The project wants to encourage some form of cultural shift, using the aspects of our place that are our greatest assets to fortify the island’s biological, environmental and human wellbeing. The wisdom inherent in vernacular voices and local practices may be best suited to reach the centres of power and exert some influence?

The ideas developed during Feasgar Dimàirt will also be incorporated into a community mural, (or separate panels of such a wall hanging) to celebrate the unique heritage and resilient Gaelic culture of North Uist – a collaborative visual legacy for the project, and a way of combining a wide range of the communities’ artistic and storytelling talents. We are grateful to our partners here, Caraidean Uibhist and Sgoil Uibhist A Tuath for collaborating so willingly in this placemaking effort.

To begin the process of mural shaping we discussed what made us most happy about living on North Uist. The listening was intent, the group itself seemed at home, offering respect, calmness and space to put complex ideas and feelings into words, at our own pace, often qualifying and refining these.

Our recurring ideas:

the magic or spell of the place, the land and its unique, unchanged qualities

‘Clarity of the light’, ‘changing colours of the water’, ‘layers of colours of the sand the seaweed and the sea as it stretches to infinity’, ‘poetry of creation’, ‘the sound of the sea’, ‘roaring like traffic’, ‘mindfulness’, ‘losing yourself’, ‘birdlife”, ‘walking for ever without a destination’, ‘the capacity of the environment to change so suddenly’, ‘peace and beauty’, ‘a constant surprise’.

identity, family and ancestors – especially for our indigenous dwellers

Gaelic method of reciting of the male members of a family tree, sloinneadh, all the precious ‘connections to the local community’, heritage of knitting, peats, creel and rope making, weaving, families widening out but often returning, ‘recognising our closeness to other cultures‘, ‘confidence in new life’, growth – babies of all species- keeping the ceilidh culture and the songs going, the ‘friendliness’ of the community.

placemaking, local names, wells and the need to map, signpost and mark these

‘Views that have remained unchanged from what our ancestors saw’, noticing the changes in coastline, species, disappearance of Gaelic, wells, standing stones and their stories, some urgency to preserve. ‘Getting more sentimental as I grow older’. Mention here of milestones, waymarks trails, mapping the area for future generations and visitors, with the stories attached to them.

and for settlers or returners, the profound sense of suddenly belonging, feeling at home and enriched by the place

‘Last night the tide was very high, I went out and stood, just watching it.

I suddenly felt so glad to be living.’

‘Glad to be here’

‘Coming from a dry, hot and dusty area, the silence, nothing, the sound of the sea was astonishing.

‘Even the sheep and cows seemed to know who we were’

The Cafaidh Gàidhlig sessions were also held in Sgoil Chàirinis over February and March. Smaller numbers here made these more intimate occasions and provided Gaelic speakers with an opportunity to speak freely in an informal setting. Games and learning activities, including the new Gaelic version of Scrabble and a beginners’ Gaelic lesson were available each morning.

Gaelic speakers were able to engage fully in profound conversations without having to give way to English. What was noticeable, to a learner was the ‘comfort’ of the speakers, the remarkable concentration on listening to each other, the lack of interruption, the implicit natural respect in turn taking, the quality of engagement, agreement and reinforcement for each speaker, the rapidity of the flow of cadence and expression, together with the ease and frequent hilarity of the discussion. To a learner, it felt like a privilege to be included so fully within the ‘cosmos’ of the language as it is spoken naturally, something that lessons rarely capture.

Areas discussed included:

people’s experiences of attending school away from Uist and living in school hostels and all that that entailed in terms of displacement and Gaelic use
broader discussion of the use of the Gaelic language in the Uist community
the urgency of what we can do to ensure that Gàidhlig has a future as a viable community language
recognition that we need to make people aware that the language is here, and to use it in as many contexts as possible (for example, a young woman who works in a local supermarket told us that it is quite normal for her to use Gaelic in her encounters with customers, but less so in other settings)
we recognise the use of Gaelic depends heavily on the context. Discussion of the importance of parents of those in Gaelic-medium education using Gaelic in the home and socially
recent research has shown that Gaelic has been losing its ‘domains’ of use in the public sphere, but also in social life, particularly amongst the young.
use of digital, Gaelic and bilingual mapping for waymarking walks to local heritage sites

There followed a discussion about activities which would promote Gaelic and provide a greater presence for the language in the community.

one man present had provided crofting life experiences in the past
CEUT has organised summer walks to sites of interest over the past few years. The walks have been led by Gaelic speakers and delivered primarily in Gaelic. People have commented on how much they enjoyed listening to the information being presented in Gaelic, even if they didn’t understand all, or indeed, any of it. An English ‘crib sheet’ was always available .
the valuable interviewing and recording work which has taken place over the years, preserving people’s language, knowledge and experience. This work is very much ongoing and can be found on Guthan nan Eilean. It can also also be enriching for both interviewer and interviewee
The observation was also made that the register of Gaelic language used depends heavily on context and setting

A discussion followed as to what may be done to ensure that Gaelic has a viable future as a living community language in the face of many challenges. The most pressing being the lack of Gaelic use among the young, for whom English tends to be the default language, even for those attending Gaelic-medium education.

Members of both groups expressed a wish for the two activities to continue and we are hoping these will become monthly CEUT events, keeping up the momentum, closeness and energy the pilot events have inspired. We have recorded the speakers who have led the discussions so far and still have more to record, especially the evening talk on Coastal Erosion with Stuart Angus in the final week in July.

As Michael Newton states in ‘Warriors of the Word’:

‘As the Gaelic sense of place is one in which communal history is embedded in the placenames attached to landscape features, it depends to a great degree upon understanding the language in which the placenames were coined’.

Island Voices “make sense”

2023-12-31 Island Voices “make sense” ~ Gordon Wells ~ 2 Comments

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 2^nd 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).

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

2023-11-30 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!

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

2023-10-02 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.

Digital Fèis Re-run

2023-08-08 Digital Fèis Re-run ~ Gordon Wells ~ Leave a comment

The second Digital Fèis for Aire air Sunnd is now scheduled for 11th and 12th August, taking the place of the May event which had to be postponed. Here’s the updated programme. Island Voices will be represented again, with new video playlists, and there will be additional Gaelic representation from the “Gaelic Crisis” writing team in the interdisciplinary forum on the Friday.

Climate, Heritage, & Wellbeing Seminar

2023-07-21 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.

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:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/climate-heritage-and-wellbeing-tickets-662401770527

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to discuss North Uist’s heritage and climate effects.”

North Uist Place-names Seminar

2023-07-14 North Uist Place-names Seminar ~ Gordon Wells ~ 1 Comment

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

2023-07-07 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.

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:

Recording Community Conversations

2023-06-28 Recording Community Conversations ~ Gordon Wells ~ 1 Comment

Following 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

Wellbeing – and the place of Gaelic

2023-06-23 Wellbeing – and the place of Gaelic ~ Gordon Wells ~ 4 Comments

The results of the Aire Air Sunnd community survey in North Uist are going online!

Jess Wood from the University of Aberdeen kicked off on Monday 19^th June with an overview, split between two videos on a dedicated CEUT YouTube playlist, both of which are well worth watching to get a sense of the breadth and depth of the project. It’s been an ambitious collaborative exercise, turning out interesting and challenging findings for anyone interested in taking a rooted and holistic approach to community wellbeing across the board.

For those with a particular interest in Gaelic, Jess has devoted quite a bit of time in the first video to analysis of responses on this topic. We’ve picked out some headlines below.

The overall sample of 79 respondents divided themselves up roughly equally between Fluent Speakers, Learners, and Non-speakers of Gaelic.

The slide below shows a really strong level of agreement in the group overall with the notion that “Gaelic has an important symbolic value in the community as a vehicle for transmitting our island culture and heritage”.

Another immediately striking statistic is the 90% figure for those expressing concern over the declining trend in use of Gaelic, as shown in this slide:

And what may be particularly interesting about this figure is the way that similar sentiment is shared across all three groups – Fluent Speakers, Learners, and Non-speakers – with even 58% of those who have no Gaelic expressing concern about it.

While Jess is duly cautious in her presentation, a topic eliciting a 90% level of concern might well be considered a community wellbeing issue worthy of further investigation…

If these figures pique your interest do take a look at the online presentation to find out more. The project also plans to run another face-to-face event in August at which Gaelic and other questions arising from the survey will be further discussed and developed. You can find full details and keep abreast of other events leading up to it on the CEUT Facebook page.

Here’s Part 1 of Jess’s presentation, in which she provides an update on the findings of Section 1 of the survey (including the questions on Gaelic):

In Part 2, Jess talks about the key findings of Section 2 – Use of the School, and Section 3 – Personal Wellbeing:

And coming soon, keep an eye out for an Island Voices video follow-up from Gordon Wells on “Recording Community Conversations”, to be followed shortly after by more detail on Digital Use and Activities with Alan Miller and Sharon Pisani from St Andrews University.