{"id":3975,"date":"2017-12-27T19:27:27","date_gmt":"2017-12-27T19:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"hhttps:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/?p=3975"},"modified":"2017-12-27T19:27:27","modified_gmt":"2017-12-27T19:27:27","slug":"looking-back-on-island-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/2017\/12\/27\/looking-back-on-island-voices\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking Back on Island Voices"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Series 1<\/a> of the Island Voices<\/a> videos first came out on DVD in 2007. The project has grown a lot since then in various ways. Everything is now online (instead of DVD); Series 2 (Outdoors<\/a>, Generations<\/a>, Enterprise<\/a>) added greatly to the number of videos created by project staff; and community members and groups have got involved in creating learning materials themselves. Perhaps the one thing that hasn\u2019t changed is that the greatest emphasis is still placed on trying to base any recordings that come out of the project on real island life. That can still be seen even in the latest series \u201cSgeulachdan Thormoid\u201d and \u201cSaoghal Thormoid\u201d<\/a>, in which the project recorded stories and conversations from Norman Maclean in his final years, after he\u2019d settled back in Uist.<\/p>\n

Support for learners<\/strong><\/p>\n

Island Voices started (with help from the European Union) as a scheme for giving simple support in using new technology to learners and teachers. So, from the start the project has been about developing skills in community members in creating and sharing learning materials. As there generally tends to be more material for beginners (particularly in Gaelic) than there is for people who want to progress on to fluency, the project placed an emphasis on more advanced materials \u2013 with a mixture of documentary clips and interviews with community members speaking naturally. That\u2019s the kind of material available in Series 1 and 2, with additional support available through Clilstore<\/a> which gives you an online transcript alongside the film itself.<\/p>\n

Made by the community<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>After those series, the project changed its way of working. It wasn\u2019t project staff who created the new materials, but community members themselves. You can see examples on the \u201cBonnie Prince Charlie<\/a>\u201d or \u201cThe Great War<\/a>\u201d pages \u2013 series that were created in collaboration with St\u00f2ras Uibhist and Comann Eachdraidh Uibhist a Tuath \u2013 in which people like Tommy MacDonald, Mary Morrison and others made their own recordings for sharing on the project website. In this way the project obtained new stories at a level even closer to the community, and new people got a chance to get involved in the work and to develop skills.<\/p>\n

Social media and other languages<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The project started online on WordPress<\/a> (for a central website) and YouTube<\/a> (for the films). But then the Facebook<\/a> page was added, to help with sharing information about what was happening in the project and in the community. There is also a Twitter<\/a> account, and overall there are well over 3,000 followers now, who are spread across the world. From the beginning the project worked bilingually with English and Gaelic. But as things have grown and developed, other languages<\/a> have appeared, such as Irish, Welsh, Basque and others. Once people start learning a new language, they may naturally develop an interest in bilingualism, and how you can use different languages together.<\/p>\n

Norman Maclean<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Perhaps Norman Maclean was among the quickest to appreciate this, and he was also one of the readiest people to record Gaelic stories and other materials. After returning to Uist he did some pieces for Series 2 to begin with. He also got involved in the Storytellers<\/a> and Great War<\/a> pages. But his \u201cpi\u00e8ces de r\u00e9sistance\u201d were the series he made towards the end of his life. The project was very fortunate to get the opportunity to record his voice while he still had the ability to tell his own stories in his own style (\u201cSgeulachdan Thormoid\u201d), and then to relate his thoughts and memories of Gaelic life in Glasgow and the Islands in a collection of long conversations (\u201cSaoghal Thormoid\u201d). All these recordings are now available on the website under the title \u201cD\u00ecleab Thormoid<\/a>\u201d. There can be no doubt that this is a very special resource that will keep advanced learners and other researchers very busy in the years to come.<\/p>\n

Natural spoken language<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although Island Voices was established for the benefit of learners, it has always sought to capture and curate the natural language of people in the community. Emphasis was placed on Gaelic \u2013 or English \u2013 as it is spoken, though there is also written support for those who wish it or may find it useful. In this way project users get a taste not just of the languages and how they are really used today, but also of the local island way of life in the multilingual, multicultural world in which we all live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Series 1 of the Island Voices videos first came out on DVD in 2007. The project has grown a lot since then in various ways. Everything is now online (instead of DVD); Series 2 (Outdoors, Generations, Enterprise) added greatly to the number of videos created by project staff; and community members and groups have got … Continue reading Looking Back on Island Voices<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4,5,6,7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio","category-call","category-classes","category-community","category-research","category-ugc","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}