Visual Arts Report 2006

The State of the Visual Arts in the Highlands and Islands – a ‘Report from the Front’

This is an exciting time of remarkable change for the Arts in Scotland. In the Highlands and Islands the visual arts, like other artforms, have experienced rapid growth in recent years with many artists choosing to live and work in the region. The 1999 edition of HI~Arts’ Galleries Guide listed some 90 galleries—the online version now has over 150 entries.

Some of the more prominent recent factors include:

• The establishment of a number of artist-led groups: Visual Arts Sutherland, Veer North (Shetland) and Highland Open Studios.
• The expansion or creation of arts centres and galleries, both public (Taigh Chearsabhagh, An Lanntair, Pier Arts Centre) and private.
• The introduction of Own Art to encourage sales
• The programme of presenting Highlands and Islands artists at art fairs, supported by the Highland Council
• The plans for a major new gallery and museum complex in Inverness
• The plans to merge the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen into Creative Scotland
• The appointment of the area’s first dedicated Public Arts Coordinator, in Inverness
• The imminent Year of Highland Culture, 2007

Less immediately apparent are such issues as:

• An increasing number of recent graduates returning to the area (as witnessed by application to the HI~Arts Visual Arts Awards scheme)
• The plans for Inverness to form part of the 2007 6 Cities Design Festival

HI~Arts has now undertaken a major investigation into the present state of the visual arts in the Highlands and Islands.

Rather than adopting the standard procedure of formal questionnaires and statistics-gathering to inform the report, HI-Arts wanted something much more immediate, personal, and subjective—what we have called a ‘report from the front’. This method is about one-to-one conversations (wherever possible face-to-face), about subjective impressions and personal experience, about local diversity, regional networking and identifying the potential for growth of creative industries and visual arts infrastructure in Highlands and Islands communities.

To undertake this investigation HI~Arts contracted Georgina Coburn. Georgina’s name will be familiar to many as she has been a very regular contributor to the HI~Arts internet journal, Northings, covering the visual arts through interviews, features and reviews.

During the summer of 2006, Georgina travelled extensively throughout the Highlands and Islands, meeting artists, galleries owners, arts officers and arts workers. Her report is now available, and informed a major Visual Arts Gathering in Ullapool in November 2006.

Out of these two initiatives, the study and the conference, HI~Arts aims to formulate a clear programme for future development that will link individual artists and national agencies, public and private sector galleries, funders and politicians in an unprecedented way.

Georgina's report, entitled "Five Challenges" can be downloaded below.

Please note: The latest version of the report, published on 9th January 2006, includes two addition footnotes on page 38.