It felt like they, the words not the raspberries, were used like hostages in a crisis, paraded around by those with interests in energy production, as problems that they intimated, could only be fixed if Highlanders stood aside and let the current abuse of their land, rights, voice, nature and communities continue unfettered. And if they didn’t? The people and communities of the Highlands would somehow fade away and cease to exist?
This, unlike the raspberries disappointed me.
I believe the real power generated in the Highlands, that gives light and energy to it’s villages and communities, comes from the people that live in them. Perhaps it’s their power rather than wind that needs to be harnessed. Perhaps if they were respected and shown even a tenth of the support given to the energy industry, the highlands would be positively buzzing.
I believe we can all do our part and the saying “Be the change you wish to see in the world” has been in my mind a lot lately. So rather than tentatively test the water regarding what is possible in the Highlands, I’m going to dive in the deep end without any armbands on.
I’m planning to use my skills to design and create, new artistic products, artworks, installations and projects in such a way that they can be produced and fabricated here in the Highlands. I will engage skilled local people and businesses where possible and I will look to train, develop and find local alternatives where not. I will look to offer opportunities to young and not so young alike. Where there’s a will I will endeavor to nurture that will. I no longer want to make sculptures, I want to build pride.
But where will I start? In the Middle East all the tradesmen, craftsmen, machinery and technologies I needed were at my beck and call, but here I am like a conductor without an orchestra. I’m just waving my stick.
This is what was in my mind as I climbed over steel plated gates that looked like they’d been made to keep battleships out.
This was the entrance to a scrapyard I had never properly noticed before. I had been taken there by the Chairman of Clyne Heritage Society to try and find a historically valuable group of machines that had been rescued when the world-famous Hunters of Brora woolen mill was being demolished in 2003. Hunters had opened in 1901 and so these machines were part of a bygone era when Brora had been considered by some to be the industrial capital of the Highlands. The scrapyard could have easily been a filmset for the kind of place snitches are dealt with or bare knuckle fights are hammered out.
What a place…!. A Ford Anglia, Robin Reliant, double decker bus, London taxi’s?, a scarecrow, twisted Scrap metal, roof panels, concrete blocks, farm equipment, old tarring machines, caravans, cuddly toy. We searched and searched for the illusive machines but they remained hidden. While my fellow explorer rang the owner of the yard to rack his brains for clues I walked around yet another corner and suddenly I saw him, a man in a blue boiler suit. He was as surprised to see me as I him. Turned out he was doing some restoration on a classic car. Further delving, and we had a technical chat. He was a skilled man of detail, a panel beater, he could weld, do sheet metal fabrication and was a fully qualified paint sprayer, which also involves competence in high level preparation, buffing and polishing. For context, the paint/finishing system we use for external sculptures is virtually the same as that used on cars, and so he had transferrable skills. He was interested. An hour earlier I was contemplating how to find my team of pride builders and now, by chance I was speaking with a man who if paired with a steel erector could pretty much build the Kelpies with me. And so it begins ..
