UHI Events

"Art on the Edge: Socially Engaged Arts Practice in Rural & Coastal Communities"

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 13:00:00 +0000

Socially engaged art exists ‘on the edge’ of the art world. In a shift away from the historic ‘individualistic’ arts field, socially engaged art blurs the boundary between practitioner and participants. This seminar explores how socially engaged artists are actively embracing collective creativity as a way of eroding, blurring and questioning this historic line of modern art. Through a series of case studies from across the Scottish Highlands and Islands, the speakers will discuss if, as socially engaged practitioners, they are more open to this practice because of living in a geographical ‘edge’.

Whisky Distilling in the Highlands and Islands: missing pieces of our post-medieval archaeology

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 16:00:00 +0000

In this University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute seminar Darroch Bratt, PhD candidate, will discuss how the archaeology of whisky distilling, both legal and illicit, fits into our understanding of the post-medieval Highlands and Islands.

"Protection Versus Extraction: Science on Skye’s Shoreline" (Dr Elsa Panciroli)

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 13:00:00 +0000

The Isle of Skye has become famous for its fossil dinosaur footprints and bones. These palaeontological discoveries are made along the shores of the island, where the sea eats at the layers of rock and exposes Jurassic sediments. The shoreline is therefore a place sitting upon multiple edges, marking both physical and temporal boundaries. The boundary between the land and sea shifts daily and geologically, through processes of erosion. The fossils transform our sense of the environment, allowing us to simultaneously exist the present and almost literally step into the past.

"Marginalised Maritime Heritage in Belfast’s Port Communities" (Dr Laura Ferguson)

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 13:00:00 +0000

Belfast has a rich industrial maritime heritage. Its port was once one of Europe’s busiest trading centres and at its peak the city dominated the global shipbuilding industry, boasting the largest shipyard in the world, Harland and Wolff. Despite the loss of the industry, shipbuilding remains a central feature of Belfast’s heritage, particularly in East Belfast where the shipyards were located. This heritage is shared by communities and can be an integral part of their culture and collective identity.

"The Edge Effect? Art / Archaeology as a fertile border zone of ideas and practice" (Dr Antonia Thomas)

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 13:00:00 +0100

In Ecology, the Edge Effect is the transitional zone between two ecosystems, a community junction which allows for greater than normal diversity and variety. A similar effect can arise from transdisciplinary practice, in this case between art and archaeology, which allows a flourishing of ideas within an environment of conceptual and creative diversity. In this paper, I will discuss recent UHI initiatives and projects which have been borne out from this uniquely interdisciplinary Edge Effect. Dr Antonia Thomas, Archaeology Institute, University of the Highlands and Islands

"Between past and present, word and deed: dictionaries at the margins" (Dr Roderick McDonald)

Thu, 27 May 2021 13:00:00 +0100

Dictionaries are social constructs, and they occupy a problematic zone between the static and the dynamic: on the one hand freezing language in time, yet paradoxically asserting stolid authority over the fundamental dynamism of actual language use. Often they succeed in doing neither, and yet, for endangered languages a lexicon can also offer a lifeline, however fraught.

"Creative Islands (Scilly Islands)"

Thu, 24 Jun 2021 13:00:00 +0100

Located 28 miles off the coast of Cornwall out into the Atlantic Ocean, the Isles of Scilly archipelago is literally on The Edge, marking the most southerly point in the United Kingdom. Five of the islands are inhabited with a resident population of 2,500 while annual visitor numbers reach over 100,000. This beautiful but remote location means that Scilly is also on The Edge economically and socially, facing real challenges in terms of its future as a sustainable community.

'The literature of Highland protest': the Sea League and its newsletter, 1933-1939 - a thoroughly modern cause" (Prof Ùisdean Cheape)

Thu, 26 Aug 2021 13:00:00 +0100

Between the two world wars, a need for the protection of that natural resource - fisheries - on which the wellbeing of islanders on the Edge had always depended was still never more pressing. The concept of being 'on the edge' was exacerbated by the apparent neglect of a remote government and bureaucracy. In 1933 Compton Mackenzie, then living 'in exile' Barra, founded 'The Sea League' or Comunn Iasgairean na Mara to lobby for the closing of the Minch to trawlers and the increase of fines for illegal trawling, and thus to rebuild local inshore fisheries with drift-nets and 'long lines'.