The organisers of a new arts festival celebrating the Caithness coastline hope it will inspire locals and visitors alike when it kicks off later this month.
The Northern Lights Festival, produced by Lyth Arts Centre, will feature stunning light projections, film screenings, exhibitions and performances, as well as a visit from the giant Storm puppet.
Part of Scotland’s Year of Coasts and Waters 2020/2021, it aims to look back on the area’s heritage with one eye on the future of the region.
Festival co-director Charlotte Mountford said: “We saw it as an opportunity to put the far north on the map in a different way.
“We have the North Coast 500 which is really about getting people through as quickly as possible and Wick isn’t always a stopping point.
“We really wanted to use this as an opportunity to shine a light on Wick as a really beautiful area with an incredible heritage and fantastic contemporary cultural scene, using our coastline as inspiration for that.
“Everyone you speak to is connected to the sea on the Caithness coastline, it’s an important part of identity up here.”
Wick expanded between the 18th and early 20th centuries thanks to a boom in the herring trade.
But then came a decline in fishing stocks, and a need to diversify into the oil industry and beyond to keep the town thriving.
“There’s a lot of opportunity now to think about regeneration and I hope what this festival does is show people, Highland Council, Highlands and Islands Enterprise that culture, art, events and heritage have a really important part to play in regeneration of places like this in the Highlands,” Mountford said.
“We’ve missed things like the gala and county show that we normally have, so I think everyone’s really up for getting together as a community and celebrate the place we call home.”
The headline event for the festival is the projection installation, which will see a mixture of archive footage and video portraits of present-day residents shine out over Wick harbour.
Each night of the festival, audiences will walk through the harbour, to old former salt stores of the herring boom, modern day oil tanks, the iconic lighthouse and the historic herring mart, for a journey through Caithness’ coastal history.
“We’ve asked people who work and live in and around the harbour to come and have a video portrait made,” Mountford said. “We’ve got a mixture of archive footage of people who have used the harbour in the past and those who use it today. That’ll be projected into seven sites across the harbour.
“It’s quite moving to see the juxtaposition of the old herring boats with the lifeboat today, it’s lighting up the harbour in this unique, different way. It’s on every night of the festival so it’s something people can come back to, visit different sites.”
© Neil HannaWick will also be visited by Vision Mechanics’ 10 metre tall mythical goddess of the sea, Storm, who will walk through the harbour on October 11 as part of her tour around Scotland.
Made from entirely recycled and natural resources, the giant puppet is a sight to behold and is accompanied by a soundscape created by the pioneering Scottish folk singer Mairi Campbell.
“There’s a massive buzz in the town about her coming, everyone’s talking about it,” Mountford said.
Light Waves: Scotland’s year of coasts and waters launch new multilingual film
That buzz is the reason the festival is being held in the first place, with Mountford keen to make sure locals are fully involved in the project.
“Events like this don’t work without community buy-in. You could be doing it anywhere, and there’s no point in that,” she said.
“Because we’ve had the additional 18 months, it’s really given us a chance to get to know the community a bit more and bring in other people.
“We’re working with the youth club in Wick because their main building is just off the harbour, we’re designing a mural with them throughout the week.
“We’re getting the buy-in of all different groups, the heritage society, coastguard, RNLI, community centres. Everyone’s been a part of it, which is really amazing.”
A co-director at the Lyth Arts Centre, Mountford moved to the area from Manchester with her partner in 2017.
“I’ve never been a southerner before in my life until I moved up here,” she laughed.
“This is our home now, we really love it. We’ve always been in love with the harbour, the coastline, so this has been a really good opportunity to get to know it even more and celebrate it with the local community as well.”
Northern Lights Festival takes place from October 8-16. For full programme information and tickets visit lytharts.org.uk/northern-lights-festival
Enjoy the convenience of having The Sunday Post delivered as a digital ePaper straight to your smartphone, tablet or computer.
Subscribe for only £5.49 a month and enjoy all the benefits of the printed paper as a digital replica.
Subscribe