Highlands Reimagined

Highlands Reimagined Episode 1

NOT JUST A PRETTY PLACE

Will: [00:00:00] Listen,

When you live in the city, it really does take some getting used to

The almost silence.

Or perhaps it’s more that you become more aware of the few sounds that there are, the wind, the very distant rush of a river, and the occasional sounds of a car traveling down this one track road.

If I look round to the north, I can see the Crask Inn where on a previous trip up here I had to [00:01:00] seek refuge in a snowstorm. I can see to my southwest and west, a huge expanse of moorland. 

Off in the distance I can see some of the mountains of the Western Highlands. I think that’s Ben More Assynt over there in the clouds.

And it feels very remote.

My name is Will Sadler. When I was young, I didn’t want my Highland holidays to end. I dreamt of exchanging my inner-city childhood for one immersed in Scotland’s rugged beauty.

In this 3-part miniseries commissioned by Strathnaver Museum and published in partnership with the Wild for Scotland Podcast, I’m finding out what happens when these romantic ideas of Highland life meet the realities of growing up in one of Western Europe’s most sparsely populated regions.

How do my memories of a holiday-heaven that I never wanted to leave compare with the realities of being a young person in the Highlands today, where leaving can sometimes feel like the only option?

You are listening to Highlands Reimagined, episode 1 – Not just a pretty place.

(Will in CAR): I’m currently on my way to a high school, right up on the north coast of Scotland. At a time when this area still struggles so much with reducing population and an aging population, I want to find out from the students what it’ll take for them to stay.

The Highlands is not alone in its ongoing fight to retain its younger population. The evidence is mixed, with significant variations depending on which part of the highlands we’re talking about. But I think it’s fair to say that difficulties [00:03:00] convincing young people to stay or return is an age-old phenomenon that rural areas all over the world are dealing with, with varying levels of success.

And it’s no different here in an area known as Mackay Country, which is located about as far north on the Scottish mainland as you can get.

Will: Hey, I’m here to see Tracy Wilkinson. 

Voice: Oh yes. If I just get you to sign in here. 

Will: Thank you very much. 

Tracy: This is Will Sadler, who is working with Strathnaver Museum and he’s really keen to hear your voices … and I’ll hand you straight over to Will. 

I’m at Farr High School, in the village of Bettyhill on the north coast of Scotland where I sit down with a small group of students, and begin by passing a voice recorder around. 

Will: Just names, first of all. So, um, my name is Will, 

Alex: My name is Alex. 

Kai: Uh, I’m Kai. 

Callan: I’m Callan. 

Dylan 1: Don’t make me laugh. 

Gracie: Sorry. 

Dylan 1: My name is Dylan. 

Gracie: Uh, my name’s Gracie. 

Dylan 2: I’m also Dylan

Will: As this is a podcast, it felt fitting to start off by asking what sounds they associated with where they lived, which ranged from the nearby small town of Thurso to far more rural areas out west.[00:05:00] 

Alex: Thurso – sometimes in the morning. I hear a lot of, uh, buses. 

Kai: There’s not buses for me ’cause I’m a bit more rural than Thurso. So the main sound I associate is just rain hitting off the roof or like animals and fields nearby. It’s, there’s really nothing, 

Callan: Probably like the waves hitting the cliff side.

Dylan 1: If you ever like go to the beach in like Melvich, there’s a lot of dogs and a lot of sheep. So probably a lot of animals. And people. 

Gracie: uh, the sound of cows and sheep get into my garden, waking me up probably, and during storms when the ocean’s really close, so it keeps whacking against the rocks.

Will: If somebody your age moved here from a city, what is the first piece of advice you would give them? 

Voice: Move back 

In case you didn’t hear that, someone responded: ‘move back’.[00:06:00] 

I think back to myself as a kid, dreaming of living here in the highlands. But that dream was based on a very simplistic view. Now, I’m not saying that my impression of this place was wrong, more, that it was … incomplete. I think anyone who holidays here – or, well, holidays anywhere,  needs to recognise that what they’re experiencing is only one perspective of a much bigger picture.

Will: The most annoying stereotype about your area? 

Kai: The irony of this is that I thought it myself when I was a little kid, like five-ish, that there’s just no people up here. There’s just all hills and sheep. It’s just funny that I myself thought it when I was younger and now I’m living up here. [00:07:00] There is more people than I initially thought there was. 

Dylan 2: One stereotype I hear a lot is, particularly rural Scotland is stuck in the Middle Ages with no technology, roads or vehicles. I hear that a lot. It’s not mostly true. 

Will:   In this series, we’ll be exploring where these stereotypes of the Highlands come. We’ll find out how lingering ideas of a remote wilderness —impressions I’m guilty of holding onto myself, and will be told off for in the next episode—can get in the way of building strong, resilient communities.

But before we get into all that, I want to start with a different question: not what makes young people want to leave Mackay Country, but what makes them want to stay.

Alex: I’ve been there for a long time and. I really like it there and a lot of my family live around the [00:08:00] area on my dad’s side, so it’s convenient. 

Kai: I’ve lived here most of my life and I have deep family ties to the area historically speaking, so 

Callan: I probably wanna stay because I’ve like grown up here and it’s like close to family. But if I was to leave, the reason probably be, ’cause most jobs are like seasonal, so that’s kind of a problem. 

Dylan 2: I think the things that keep me here are maybe my favorite people are here, and if I was to move to somewhere like a big city, since I’ve lived mostly rural, I wouldn’t be used to it. I don’t think I would fare well in somewhere, you know, quite large. So it’s sort of like getting used to it would be quite a challenge. 

Dylan: I don’t necessarily want to stay myself, but a point that does like make me want to stay … It’s probably all the people here ’cause I’ve, I’m very connected to them. I wouldn’t really want to leave, [00:09:00] 

Gracie: I guess the people as well. It’s quite a close-knit community and everyone knows everyone, so it’s really quite nice.

Like if something happens, you know, you’ve got a whole network to lean back on.

Will (IN SITU): The question of staying or leaving is nothing new for Mackay country. I’m currently standing in front of the large imposing pulpit in the main part of what is now Strathnaver Museum

Up the stairs, I go.

The power structures would’ve been directly represented in the levels at which people sat in this church. You’ve got the congregation on the ground level, local people. You’ve got the minister who would stand in the pulpit here – I’m probably a good eight or nine feet off the ground. And then directly ahead of the pulpit would’ve been the balcony area where the local landowners and gentry and factors would all be looking down on both the minister and the congregation.

And it was the man who stood in this pulpit between about 1814 and 1819 whose job it was to translate – from English to Gaelic – eviction notices telling the people of the local area that they would be removed from the land where they had lived and where their families had lived for generations. This is the second phase of what became known as the Highland Clearances.

Dr. Elizabeth Richie is a senior lecturer in history at the University of Highlands and Islands. 

Elizabeth: One of the main things that landlords were keen on doing in the late 18th and early 19th century was they saw how profitable sheep rearing could be, and they were quite keen to put over some of the best parts of their land to this very profitable activity.

But large scale sheep [00:11:00] rearing is not compatible with people living there and farming those areas as well. 

For over a hundred years – from around 1750 to 1860 – the Highland Clearances led to thousands of people being removed from land they had lived on for generations – all in the name of economic “progress”. Mackay Country was particularly badly affected. In Strathnaver, 1819 became known as the ‘Year of the Burnings’ where people were – quite literally – burnt out of their homes to free up the land for more lucrative sheep farming. 

After being forced off their land, the next question was where would these displaced people go?

Elizabeth: What some of the landlords and factors thought was quite a neat solution was to remove the people from these inland areas and to replace them on the coasts. And the coastal land was often quite infertile, quite rocky, quite windswept.

The land was divided into long, narrow strips: crofts. There would be a house on each croft, and you would have your particular strip, uh, where you could do any sort of agriculture you wanted. Now, these plots were designed to be too small to support families because the idea was that the people who are now crofters should be working part-time at waged work.

And that was very often in the kelp industry on the coasts, or it might be in some sort of other industry that the landowner had set up. The kelp industry was profitable for the landlord. The kelp workers themselves were quite poorly paid, and it meant you didn’t really have a choice of [00:12:00] employment. It’s not like going for a job now where you can choose to apply for a job for this company or that organization.

If you lived in one of these places, then the landlord was your only potential employer and kelp working or whatever; it was that he  – usually he –  had set up and was your only option. So it wasn’t a case of a sort of free market of labor. And if you didn’t want to do that, then you’d need to head off to the city or get enough money together for an immigrant ship or something like that.

Will: At exactly the same time as people were deciding whether to take their chances on the coasts or move away to find opportunity elsewhere, the Scottish Highlands were becoming an increasingly popular holiday destination for the emerging middle classes; drawn there by the dramatic paintings and writings of the romantic era.

Elizabeth: We all see things through lenses and the lens that was created and is a very strong lens and is very much promoted and [00:13:00] continued today is this romantic lens through which to see the highlands. 

Will: From Landseer’s dramatic paintings of stags on misty hillsides to Walter Scott’s tales of noble clans, the romantic artists of the 18th and 19th centuries crafted an image of the Highlands as wild, untamed, and timeless … whilst its people were often either misrepresented or forgotten about altogether.

Elizabeth: You’ve got the impact of the Napoleonic Wars where you can’t go in the grand tour around Europe anymore. And so instead you go on the grand tour around your backyard, which is the Scottish Highlands, and there comes to be quite a well worn set of roots around different parts of the Highlands. 

Will: One of the things that really strikes me is that a lot of the writers seem to be writing about these wild and spoil landscapes of the Highlands at more or less, exactly the same time that people were being cleared off their land through the Highland clearances.

Elizabeth: Yes, I agree. There is a. [00:14:00] There’s a disjuncture, isn’t there? Between these tourists coming up exactly the time that local people were being removed, cleared to the coasts, encouraged to emigrate; going to the industrial cities to make their living and making the highlands a deserted place. And it’s not much talked about, I don’t think, in the travel journals.

Will: They were almost like seeing what they needed to see. Based on what they had seen and read from the various romantic artists of the time. 

Elizabeth: If you have been looking at Lanseer’s paintings and you’ve been reading maybe some travel accounts and so on, and you’re expecting to see amazing scene scenery, there’s no discussion of the people who live there are these sorts of, then that is what you’ll see when you go traveling and you’ll actually blot out, uh, things which don’t fit that narrative.

Will: There’s a striking irony at play here. Earlier, the students I spoke to named the strength of their local community as the main reason they wanted to stay in Mackay country. Yet for centuries, the Highlands have been portrayed as an empty wilderness untouched by human hands; romanticized picture postcards that still persist today.

On a bright late winter morning, I meet the students at Strathnaver Museum. After being asked to have a wander around the collections and see what catches their attention, it’s interesting to me that the objects they are drawn to have “people” at their very heart.

Kai: So there was a display that was like an immigrant’s kist, a box of stuff that they took with them when they were leaving. And I found like that really interesting. 

Those leaving the Highlands would have to think very carefully about what personal belongings they could afford to take with them – sometimes to the other side of the world. These would typically include essential clothing, small tools or implements for work, as well as essential documents and paperwork for the journey to their new lives.

Kai: They were leaving for opportunity. They were [00:16:00] leaving because there wasn’t anything here. They were leaving because they were being cleared off the land. 

Dylan 1: There was like a box filled, filled with like old instruments. There was a fiddle and accordion bagpipes. I think it’s just interesting ’cause after being like cleared and having your house burned, they had some way of entertaining themselves after like the worst thing probably was to happen. 

Gracie: Ceilidh’s are still quite popular up here. You’ve got Ceilidh Club at school as well, and I’m learning fiddle. I know a lot of people do similar instruments and stuff, so I think that part of the culture is still alive and well. 

Will: These days you might imagine a ceilidh as part of a wedding celebration’ but it’s much more than that…The word ‘ceilidh’ actually comes from the word ‘visit’ in the Gaelic language. It’s as much about sharing stories, songs and playing music together as it is about traditional Scottish dancing. Here is museum manager: Fiona Mackenzie. 

Fiona: Yeah, I think that that sense of community and the coming together and music as a source to do that is really important because the removals had created such social disruption; but then those folk that went abroad, they took their culture with them. 

Will: For many of those that decided not to leave Mackay country, their only option was to move from the straths to the coasts where they had to adapt and adapt fast.

Aaron: I quite liked seeing about the fishing stuff, about just how much and how specialized, while all the tools were, you could tell they were good at it and they knew what they were doing. 

Will: I keep on thinking about the fishing stuff because the ingenuity and the [00:17:00] adaptability and being able to quite quickly switch to a new trade after the clearances was so impressive. I mean, obviously it was very difficult and it wasn’t fun by any means, but it was incredibly impressive. I don’t whether … Can you speak to that for a bit Fiona?

Fiona: Yeah. There would’ve been fishing that would’ve been going on along the course, but the folk that were cleared from the inland straths; they had absolutely no experience of fishing whatsoever.

But the ingenuity that they used as well, they didn’t have any equipment. They didn’t have any knowledge, so they would buy equipment or boats that had been rejected by fishermen as as old equipment 

Fiona: Donald McLeod, who was a stone mason, and he was a vocal critic of the estate. He wrote a number of letters. He speaks about the hardships that were faced by the folk that ended up on the coast and then had to take up [00:18:00] fishing. And within one of those letters, he gives a quiet detailed description of those that were lost on the shore through simple things like picking cockles being washed off by the waves.

But he then also does go on to describe an enterprising opportunity where they do take a boat and they do go out and they do start learning about this. 

Will: Fiona reads an extract from Donald’s letter. 

Fiona: Without sale, helm or compass with three patched oars, only one of the party ever having been on sea before, this apparently insane attempt, gathered a crowd of spectators, some in derision cheering us on, and other friends imploring us to come back.

However, Neptune being then and one of his placid moods, we boldly ventured on human life having become reduced in value. And after a night spent on the sea in which we fishermen suffered severely from seasickness, to the great astonishment of the people on shore, the Heather Boat, as she was called, [00:19:00] reached the land in the morning, all hands safe with a very good take of fishes.

Will: Returning to the question of the museum objects which caught the student’s attention, Dylan found some personal testimonies of people’s experiences of the clearances.

Dylan 2: I think the written parts were very interesting because if you think about people, during those times, you don’t think of like individuals. So like seeing sort of individual writings, sort of how they were the personalities showing.

It’s quite interesting.

Fiona: So some of those were the evidence that was given at the Napier Commission. They were the witness testimonies about the hardships that they had faced after being removed. 

Will:  In the decades following the Clearances, protests driven by demands for secure land rights, fairer rents and better conditions led to the formation of  the Napier Commission, which was convened in 1883 to investigate conditions for Crofters and Cotters in the Highlands and Islands. 

Three years later came the Crofters Holdings Act 1886, which for the first time gave people living on Crofts some security of tenure and the right to pass their tenancy down through generations.  Here is Elizabeth Richie of University of Highlands and Islands again. 

Elizabeth: I heard a quote once about a croft is a small piece of land surrounded by legislation, I thought was rather clever.

 

Will: (Laughs) That is a, that is good. I like that. I like that 

Elizabeth: You have what we now see as a landmark moment of the Crofters Holdings Act being passed, which provides you with secure tenure, fair compensation for improvements and other key elements which have been firmly held onto ever, ever since, in the hundred and almost fifty years since the passing of that act.

Will:  Whilst hailed as a milestone in land reform, the act was – and still is – not without controversy, with some critics arguing it didn’t go far enough by failing to redistribute land or protect the landless. Over a century later, the crofting system it established is regarded as both essential and frustratingly inflexible in equal measure. 

The protests that led to the 1886 Act weren’t just about land—they were about the right to build stable, rooted lives in places people could call home. A place where people could feel they had some influence over decisions that impacted their lives. A place where people could belong. 

Belonging. A universal part of being human, even for an unashamed introvert like me. There is growing evidence globally that the nature of human connection is changing.  I sit down with two friends from Mackay Country, Catriona and Rosemary, to talk about how that shift is playing out in their own community. 

Will: Actually, you know what would be quite nice, just to give us a quick pen portrait of growing up in this area. Tell us what was, what was it like?

(Silence)

Just to reiterate that I am actually sitting in a space with two other people. I’m not by myself in the Telecenter, just chatting away to myself. There are two other the people in the room. 

(Silence)

Thing is, we’re gonna record at least four and a half hours of this …

(Laughing)

Catriona: so, so you might get a minute out it, 

Will: I’m sure. I’m sure we’ll get at least a few minutes out of it.

Rosemary: Well you’ve taken the clock away, so we have no idea what time it is. 

Will: Yes, I did take it away. But only because the tick of the clock was being picked up by the microphones and not because I wanted my interviewees to lose all concept of time, I promise.

Rosemary: I remember I worked from quite a young age in hotels, so say about 14 up in Borgie.

But the highlight of the weekend would be that gathering in the local pub, and it would be what I would call a ‘proper ceilidh’, where you had all the getting together and drams. I mean, it would be round after round, and then TD would bring out the accordion and somebody else would join in and it was just a, a night to be had.

You wouldn’t find that now? You just would not find that. That ceilidh culture of the pub gathering, the socialization has gone completely.

Will: Yeah, it does raise the question, doesn’t it? Is there any way of getting it back or is it gone? And, you know, again, I’m not saying that this is a problem just for the Highlands because I think it’s [00:23:00] a, I think it’s an issue that is global, frankly.

Rosemary: Oh, definitely. 

Loneliness is increasingly seen as a public health priority by the World Health Organisation. 

Earlier, the students talked about the importance of ceilidhs as a way of bringing people together. This is a form of socialising that certainly has changed. Nowadays it’s less likely to be an informal gathering and more likely to be a planned event. 

Catriona: Another factor up here is agricultural practices and crofting and how that’s changed. But that was a massive cohesive element. 

That needing each other and relying on each other. Some people would have some machinery or something that someone else didn’t, and you would borrow it and or you’d all go out and work together at the sheep ’cause you couldn’t do it on your own.

You needed other people and their expertise and their knowledge. 

Rosemary: And the peat… peat cutting.. The whole family out [00:24:00] into the peats. It was like a, a really big event, you know? And you all pitched in and you all helped out and that everybody from the village would help, you know, help each other.

Catriona: And then of course at the end you’d have to celebrate that it was all done by having a ceilidh in the house and a dram. And maybe now even, the crofting element and the people who are involved in crofting maybe have a bit more of that getting together and common ground for those who aren’t involved, you know, don’t have anymore. But it’s obviously changed a massive amount with advancement in technology in some regard, in some ways, it’s a lot easier for people. 

Will: Compounding the challenge of population decline is the sharp rise in empty homes in the Scottish Highlands. According to Scottish Government data, the number of properties left vacant for 12 months or more, rose from 434 in 2013 to 3,334 in 2023. A 670% increase

Will: And yet we were just in the cafe, just there, and you must have said ‘hello’ to how many people? A good half dozen, no, maybe even a dozen people coming in and out. And so I, as an outsider, I get a real sense of there being a real togetherness, 

Catriona: But it’s a nice element of living somewhere small is, is knowing people and, and that kind of, yeah, that feeling of, you know who you are, you know who they are. That there’s that sort of, sort of just, I dunno what the word is really like sense of community .

Will: Listening to a recording of that conversation are the high school students I’ve been working with. They tell me what they think. 

Dylan 2: I think the main takeaway was just when they started saying about like the, the pub ceilidh things were sort of not happening anymore.

It sort of just shows how everyone’s like – not more [00:26:00] reclusive – but they’re less sort of together more often. 

Dylan: Yeah. I think a big takeaway on that was the communal, like gatherings. We really lack like the communal areas, like we can’t get together anymore. 

Jamie: It would be quite nice if we got back all the community events with having ceilidh every few weeks maybe or once a month.

Kai: I live in a crofting community and I’m involved in that quite a bit, and in part, some of it hasn’t really changed much. I’ve helped out with clipping multiple times and there is always drinking involved afterwards. There probably isn’t as many people doing it now as there used to be though, and I’ve even noticed to myself that it’s gotten smaller and smaller over the years.

Will: Also listening was Tracy Wilkinson, their teacher. She had some interesting reflections on the importance of crofting as a way to build connection. 

Tracy: As an incomer, we wanted sheep ’cause we had [00:27:00] a croft and that was just the best thing we could have done. ’cause we met so many people and we’ve got really good friends now.

And that’s from working at the fanks together. You’re helping each other out when you’re sheep dipping or if you’re going to the sale. And I’d say any incomer that, that would be a must is to like, get involved in activities. 

Will: So what role do the students have – what role do we all have – in building a local community that we want to live in? 

Later that day, two of the students, Dylan and Aaron meet with Lara Gunn and Joanna Mackenzie, who both grew up in Mackay Country, moved away and then came back later in life.

Aaron tells Lara and Joanna what community here means for him.

Aaron: I was in Thurso until primary six or seven, maybe before that, even primary five. And the first few years I came up here, it was like, oh, it’s middle of nowhere. There’s nothing really, and it’s just, it’s so dead compared to [00:28:00] being in Thurso. But as I’ve gotten older and lived here for longer and actually gotten really in with the community and working in their local places and got to know people and the community by being in it; it’s definitely made me feel like this is home. 

Aaron has a question for Lara and Joanna

Aaron: What do you think it is that makes up here have more of a sense of connection than anywhere else? 

Lara: I can only speak I guess for for what I know, but I think it’s just that sense of history and sense of being kind of part of here, like your generations being part of this area. I 

Joanna: I think also you’re taught how hard they fought for our area and the clearances come into it and you’re just given such a sense of worth. And having gone through being eradicated for sheep, I think it does make you feel that this little villages that we’ve created are, are ours, and we need to protect them.

Will: Lara and Joanna share their thoughts on what it takes to make a thriving community in Scotland’s far north. [00:29:00] Lara goes first, followed by Joanna. 

Lara: There is a lot of stuff going on in the community, but you have to put yourself out there and get involved and join clubs, and join committees and to chat, like what’s going on.

And if something doesn’t exist, then you know, there might be the opportunity to create a group that does that or to get together with other people who’ve got similar interests.

Joanne: The kids wanted gymnastics and I put it on Facebook and Caithness Gymnastics reached out, so now we have a gymnastics group here.

So you have to forge your own futures and this place can be what anybody wants it to be for anybody. 

Will: There are of course gonna be barriers to achieving this, especially for young people without access to a car. But I really like Lara and Joanna’s positive attitude here and their call to action… for people to find their role in strengthening the community that they call home.

Lara: Also, you need people to move up there from other areas that are not from here. You need that mix of different people, different skills, different mindsets, and that’s what makes a good kind of thriving community. 

Joanne: First of all, you really have to understand the area and understand that [00:30:00] it will support you if you support it. Whereas in, in built up areas or busier places, you can become really insular; you don’t know your neighbors, you don’t know what’s happening around about you; here, everybody will know your business before you know it. And you have to embrace it ’cause that’s a safety blanket as well. They will know if you’ve not been out of your house for a couple of days if there’s something wrong.

So it’s really just embracing this; the culture that is up here, and knowing that people look out for one another. There is opportunity. The winters will be dark and long, but the summers will be fantastic and bright. 

Will: In 2024 Scottish newspaper, the Herald declared the new Highland Clearances. The newspaper said.

“Comparing population decline in the highlands and islands, however serious, to the notorious 19th century clearances that led to families being burnt out of their homes, might not sit well with some Herald readers. [00:31:00] However, it’s a comparison that was made not by us, but by others. Living at the sharp end of what is being called a population emergency.”

The paper cited, transport, housing, health, connectivity, and education as key drivers for population resilience. 

In the next episode, we will explore what needs to change to encourage more young people to build their futures here in Mackay Country. 

While some people will always feel the need to leave, we’ll also hear that what really matters is coming back.

Highlands Reimagined is an Anya Media production for Strathnaver Museum, published in partnership with the Wild for Scotland Podcast.

The executive producers are Fiona Mackenzie for Strathnaver Museum, and Kathi Kamleitner for Wild for Scotland. 

The script editor is Andy Jones. The theme music is by Cameron Mackay, with additional music by me.

Thank you to all those who contributed to this series, and a special thank you to the students and staff of Farr High School.

Highlands Reimagined is recorded, edited, mixed and presented by me: Will Sadler.

Find out more at highlandsreimagined.com

The Artist Residency Programme through which this podcast was made was part funded by Museums Galleries Scotland, The William Syson Foundation, the Children’s and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund, and received support from the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

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This is a short break to say a big thank you to Wild for Scotland Podcast for supporting this show. Wild for Scotland is an immersive travel podcast offering stories, interviews, and inspiration for Scotland-lovers around the world. To find out more, search Wild for Scotland wherever you get your podcasts. Now, back to the show.

 

Highlands Reimagined Episode 2 

HOME TRUTHS

 

LINKS ARE IN BLACK BOLD

I’m at Strathnaver Museum, which is located in the northern Scottish Highlands, in one of the most sparsely populated regions of Western Europe. I’m with a group of students from the local high school and I’m asking who thinks they’re likely to still be living here in 10 years time?

Will: We’ve got one, yes, three, not sure, up 2, 3, 4, 5, probably nos. 

Five out of nine of the group think they won’t be here and of [00:01:00] the remaining four, only one thinks they definitely will be.

As Mackay Country struggles with population decline, this 3 part series commissioned by Strathnaver Museum, and published in partnership with the Wild for Scotland podcast, asks what will encourage its young people to build their futures here? 

You are listening to Highlands Reimagined episode 2, Home Truths

Kai: I want to go to uni for chemistry, so that’s not really an option right here. And even then, jobs are also an issue with them all being seasonal. There’s just nothing really stable.

Will: In episode one, I asked the students of Farr High what makes them want to stay here. Now I’m passing a small audio recorder around the group asking what makes them feel like they need to leave. 

Alex: It would probably be to be, get a better job and to get money and, you know, start like a new life somewhere else when I become older.

Callan: If you [00:02:00] want better opportunities for after leaving school, you probably have to go pretty far away from like where you live. 

Gracie: Most of the work is seasonal and if you want a career or anything other than hotel work, it’s really not gonna happen for you. 

Will: Something that I’ve learned whilst doing this project is that for some of the students, it’s not so much a lack of work that’s the issue here, but more the variety – or rather lack of it – that makes them feel they need to leave.

Across the whole of the UK it’s actually pretty common for young people in rural areas to leave the place where they grew up. 

So perhaps there’s a different question we can ask… If young people do leave Mackay Country – what might encourage them to come back?

Dylan and Aaron are chatting with [00:03:00] Joanna and Lara, two people from Mackay Country who grew up here, moved away and then returned. Here’s Joanna. 

Joanna: Growing up here was brilliant. It was a case of you went home when it got dark, everywhere was pretty safe. The roads were much quieter and it was just a great fun place to grow up.

It was a given that once you got to a certain age, you started applying to universities. It wasn’t really questioned you did anything else. If you had the academic grades, then that’s what you were doing. So I did it. I went. I followed what I was supposed to do, went off to university, studied for four years, but I always wanted to come home.

We had the croft, so my intention was always to build a house in that croft from when I was a little girl. 

And here’s Lara.

Lara: I. I also suspected I would leave. It was always expected that I would kind of go to university at some point, and I always thought I’d come home at some point, but I wanted to travel, so I went to university at Strathclyde in Glasgow, did four years there, and then I went traveling [00:04:00] to Australia, New Zealand for a couple of years, and then I moved to Bristol and then to London.

So yeah, I really enjoyed living away in cities. And I guess in terms of coming home I always thought I would eventually, but it was having children that made me want to come back home. 

Aaron: Was there a moment when you decided to actually come back? 

Joanna: I think I was always looking for the job advert that was gonna take me back north.

I remember really clearly the day that my auntie sent me, it was from The Telegraph, it was for a graduate surveyor post in Orkney, and that at the time was as close as I felt I was gonna get to home. I had an excellent postgraduate opportunity in Edinburgh with a really renowned company. I’d already worked there for a year. I had the world at my feet, but my heart was here. 

Lara: When I was pregnant with my daughter, I knew that I wanted my child to have the same upbringing as I did, and I knew I wanted her to be part of the community and have the connection with the place and the land and the community that I have here. 

Dylan 1: What kind of work do you do [00:05:00] now and what are the benefits and challenges of doing it in the far north?

Joanna: When I was pregnant with my first, I made a big decision that I threw myself into my own business instead of going back to employment. And a few years later, that business spawned into another business. I don’t like to think of it as management. I like to think of it as leading because it tends to get better results from people if you’re not telling them what to do, but you’re kind of working for the same goal.

And now I have three businesses that keep me really busy, employ quite a lot of people up here. And I find the benefits of that is that it’s like a lifestyle business for me, that my, my children come first. If the school call me because someone’s fallen over, I can be here in a heartbeat. I have ties, but we have like a really good team of staff as well.

So for me to move home and to create a network that supports my lifestyle, supports my family, and ultimately the community, I just think that is where I’ve wanted to be and where I see [00:06:00] myself continuing to go. 

Lara: I work for a high street bank. I work in like digital marketing and customer experience, and it’s the same job I was doing down in London before I came home.

And I transferred and I work from home here. The benefits are that I can live here, that I can work from home, that I can kind of work it around my children to an extent that I can do like a four day week and I can do nursery drop offs and stuff, which I’m quite lucky to do; wouldn’t be able to do that with every type of job.

And I get to travel down to London or Bristol and places when I need to. I guess in terms of the disadvantages, I do miss out on that kind of interaction and cross-the-desk chat. And also I think in terms of career progression, if I’m looking to move into a different area, it’s harder for me to have that kind of, raising my profile and to have relationships with new people when I’m home-based. So I think that puts me at a bit of a disadvantage, but there’s also advantages to working from home. And for me, I’ve got as good connection, wifi, et cetera, than I had in London. So, you know, it’s, it’s really easy to work from [00:07:00] home for me.

Dylan 1: What do you think helps young people stay or come back to build new lives here? 

Lara: Having the opportunities, education, college, apprenticeships, career opportunities, and I think a diverse range of careers depending on what people want to do. Accommodation is a big issue and there’s not much of it at all around here.

I think you really want to have a busy, thriving, active community with… You know, the heart of a community is, you know, schools, halls, pubs, hotels, cafes, um, so we need to have all those kind of things for young people to want to stay and to want to come back. And then also childcare. That’s not so relevant when you’re very young, but you know, if you want to have your family here it’s very hard. Even if you have family here, it’s still very difficult, but it’s very hard if you don’t; to manage if you want to work when there’s very, very limited childcare outside of nursery and school.

Will: In the first episode, we explored how the romanticised view of the highlands as a remote wilderness compared with the lived experience of young people in Mackay Country today.

We heard from Dr. Elizabeth Richie, senior lecturer in history at the University of Highlands and Islands. 

She’s keen to remind us that a lack of community resources in rural areas isn’t something that just happens by accident. It’s the result of choices that have been made by people with power; whether understandable or not; whether justifiable or not; they are choices all the same. 

Will: Within the first two minutes of the podcast episode one, I describe the place that I’m standing in as quote remote, and I promise I wasn’t doing that to troll you, Elizabeth, I promise. Let’s unpack this word “remote”. 

Elizabeth: Yeah, this is my bug bear because the word remote is inherently talking about a place from the perspective of somewhere else.

In order to describe any place as remote, you have to be standing somewhere [00:09:00] else to do that. So it’s clearly the perspective of somebody who’s not from that place. 

Will: An inherently disconnected perspective 

Elizabeth: Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. Inherently disconnected from, from the place and doesn’t really do much useful to describe what the place itself, 

Will: So is remoteness about geography or is it really about inequality? Perhaps a place only remote when it’s being denied the infrastructure, investment and opportunity that more urban areas take for granted? 

Elizabeth: The far north is a good example of where if you have to go to a hospital appointment, you might have to travel for two, even three hours to get to a hospital appointment.

And that is a really serious, practical issue, and that’s because of choices. It’s not because of anything inherent about Durness or Melness or Kinlochbervie or anything like that. It’s because of choices which have been made [00:10:00] to remove services locally, or even if we go back further in time, to establish services in urban centers, which again, is understandable. 

 

So in thinking about how these places are constructed as “remote”, both mentally, you know, as we look at maps and have our stereotypes and all the rest of it, but also practically how those places are increasingly made to be remote as services are, are removed or never created in them in the first place.

Will: One of the things I hear regularly from people I speak to in Mackay Country is how distant they sometimes feel, not from London, which is a given, not even from Edinburgh, but from the headquarters of their local council in Inverness, only 70 or 80 miles away as the crow flies, but which can take up to three hours by road.

So let’s look at those practical realities: housing, schools, jobs, and so on, and what needs to be in place to make coming back a real option for the students of Mackay Country.

In their series on what they called the “New Highland Clearances”, Scottish newspaper The Herald suggested that a lack of jobs is not the issue. It’s that when people take up those jobs, they can’t find an affordable house to live in. 

Boyd Alexander is settlement officer for Highlands Council. 

Boyd: The key to any settlement is you need a house. If you don’t have a house, you can’t have a settlement.

In the Highlands. The key issue is that there isn’t enough housing, so there’s no point in trying to have a settlement officer if we don’t have enough houses. So the main point of my work is to work with communities to identify [00:12:00] locations where housing could be built

Will: Boyd is chatting with students, Jamie and Kai.

Here’s Jamie. 

Jamie: Do you think that the reason why the houses are so expensive up here is because people buying second homes for like holidays and that? 

Boyd: (Pause) … I think it doesn’t help. So back in 2018, the average house price was one of the lowest in the country, but it used to be about 120,000. When you look over it in the 2023 statistics, you will see that average price of a house in Tongue and Bettyhill has gone up and now the average price is over 200,000. Uh, so that’s a significant difference. 

Will: Boyd shows Jamie and Kai various charts and graphs which highlight changes in Mackay Country in terms of population, house prices and school rolls over the years. 

One chart shows that between 2018 and 2023 house [00:13:00] prices in Tongue and Bettyhill – the Community Council area where the school is located – have increased three times more than the average for Scotland as a whole. A 73% increase in the space of only five years. 

Boyd: You can see that definitely there has been more of a demand for houses in the North West. I think one of the problems is the affordable housing is not there. It’s not that you aren’t able to buy a house, it’s the fact that there’s not the affordable housing to move in to.

There’s not very many areas where you can put housing quite easily, which are beside a road. Less than 5% or less than 10% in steepness with services going by. And that would be the ideal place. So it’s, it’s really quite hard to pick these areas. So it’s a challenge, but it’s an interesting challenge and it’s great to be working with communities 

Will: Obstacles to building more houses include various land use restrictions that reserve it for particular economic uses or conservation.

Kai [00:14:00] talks about inby land, which refers to more fertile, enclosed cropland, traditionally used for cultivation and grazing. 

Kai: With inby land, what I find interesting about that is that the rules were changed, at least for my community recently, so that that is considered common grazing and cannot have houses built on it.

Boyd: So you’ve got the common grazing. You then got the NSA, the National Scenic Area, and then you have the triple-S-I: Site of Special Scientific Interest. So you have all these designations on bits of land, which makes it so much, much harder. And even if you do find an area of common grazing, which the community’s prepared to give up, to resume the common grazings, it’s at least nine months to a year.

So if you’re thinking about the length of your project, you are already adding an extra year onto it, which is if you need houses today. Yeah, it’s really hard if you have all these delays. 

Kai: I think a lot of the problem is the state of some of the houses that are up for sale at the minute as well. ’cause there’s a [00:15:00] house nearby to me that is not very up to date at all.

All the windows are really all not glazed to what the ones are now, and yet it’s ridiculously expensive for both the size and the energy efficiency of it. Which is a shame. 

Jamie: I used to wonder why I always saw so many campervans up here. Then I realized the housing market. So yeah, that makes a lot more sense now.

Will: You mean because people are living in camper vans?

Jamie: Yeah. 

Boyd: If you can show that there are people living in temporary accommodation, like static caravans, that’s a really key point. That’s people who should be in housing, certainly up here where it’s a bit windier and a bit colder in a bit. 

Kai: Yeah, I imagine it must get quite cold in those sometimes. 

Will: Boyd gives an example of a couple who were offered jobs in the northwest but were unable to accept them. Why? Well, one factor was the lack of housing, and this is a story I’ve heard a few times. But it wasn’t only that …

Boyd: [00:16:00] They would like the job, they accepted the job and they would be coming as a couple. I don’t think they had children, but they were thinking of maybe having children.

But, at the time, the early learning center, the childcare, had been mothballed. And so they thought, well, one, we can’t necessarily get a house, but also if the childcare is removed, then that would be a key issue. So is it just housing? No. It’s not just housing. It’s one of the keystones. But again, education and the school is a keystone, and unless you have young people, your community is not sustainable.

So children aren’t the be all and end all, but they’re certainly a very key, important part of your community. 

Will: Let’s just pause for a moment to unpack what Boyd is saying here. I mean, it’s sort of obvious when you think about it, but firstly, in order for a community to exist, it firstly needs some houses for people to live in.

In order to attract young families of working age to live in that community, you need a school and childcare. Once those children grow up, they may leave, but in order for them to come back later and maybe start their own families, those houses and that school still need to be there. It’s a self-sustaining cycle, each part dependent on the others to keep the community alive.

Young people can receive their entire primary and secondary education without having to board away from home. That has certainly not always been the case. Here’s Rosemary, who you heard in the first episode. 

Rosemary: When I look back, I just think, gosh, 

I just remember coming home at weekends and saying, “please, can I just not go there anymore?”

I mean, obviously I got used to it, but did I enjoy it? No, no. 

Will: When Rosemary started senior secondary education, she had to go to a school in Golspie, around 65 miles away. 

Rosemary: We would leave home Sunday lunchtime. [00:18:00] You would get there at four o’clock or something, and then when you went home on a Friday, you would get home maybe about 8, 8, 9 o’clock at night.

Uh, so. You are only really getting one day at home on the Saturday. 

Will: Is there anything you look back on at your school days in Golsby and think those are good moments? 

Rosemary: Leaving school? No, it wasn’t a bad time. I did get used to it. I think it probably took me about a year. I was never a mollycoddled child, don’t get me wrong.

I mean, my mother was as tough as nails, but I mean school itself, I made some lifelong friends who I’m still in touch with today. It was just strange. 

Will: I remember when I used to go away just for school trips. That was just like, for an overnighter, I would hate that. 

Rosemary: The fact that you’d never been away from home and you know, you didn’t travel back [00:19:00] then, so it was kind of being sent off to the unknown.

[Music break]

Jim: Well, I’m a lot, a lot less loquacious than I was. 

Will: What does loquacious mean? 

Jim: I dunno, but it’s the right word. 

Will: (Laughs) I was thinking to myself, “oh no, Jim’s already using words. I don’t understand”.

Jim: I’ll try not to

Will: I’ve called in on Jim Johnston, who was the head teacher of Farr High School when I first started working here in 2012 and is now retired. Originally from Shetland, Jim also had to board when he was a student. 

Jim: It prepared you in a way, it gives you a kind of resilience. I think it might be outweighed by the, the disadvantages, which are disconnection from your parents, your, your community, your grandparents, and also disconnection from your siblings. 

Will: Would you say that when it was commonplace for young people to move away at later stages of education, did that facilitate them then moving away for good from the area that they’re, they were from, do you think?[00:20:00] 

Jim: Yeah, it, it definitely does because there, there are far more of my former pupils living at a distance than are in the vicinity and you never see them again. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they never come back, but they rarely come back. 

Will: Jim’s career at Farr High School spanned a pivotal shift in Highland education policy.

When he began teaching. It was common for students to leave for boarding school in the later years of secondary education. However, during the 1980s and 1990s, the Highland Council introduced a new policy to upgrade or build schools capable of supporting students throughout their entire secondary education, eliminating the need for boarding.

Farr High School was amongst the first to make this transition. Whilst Mackay Country’s other high school, 60 miles away at Kinlochbervie, was one of the last to be built, in 1995. 

Jim: One of the things we [00:21:00] tried to do in the school was to, uh, direct pupils to, uh, the kind of thing that would get them a job that would enable them to come back here.

And the, the kind of thing that we selected was things like, um, going to sea. Uh, our training in the oil industry. And quite a lot of, uh, former pupils did exactly that and many of them come back. 

Will: Jim tells me that the introduction of local schooling for all ages has undoubtedly had a positive impact.

Jim: There’s been a definite impact on our community here in that the people have come into the community for the school. They’ve come here so that their children can go to a human sized school. The people who would’ve gone off to school and would never have been seen again, they also stayed here, had their full education here, went to university, came back again [00:22:00] and are making a difference here. There’s several people like that, including my own daughter. There’s loads of them and I think that the success of the school and the success of other small schools around the periphery have made the periphery more sustainable. 

Will: There’s ongoing population decline. I hear about primary schools really struggling with their numbers and having only a tiny handful of kids. That’s gonna have a knock on effect to the secondary schools. I mean, do, do you imagine that the policy of young people being able to school locally is here to stay? Or, or, or could we find ourselves in a situation where it has to go back to the hostel system?

Jim: Yeah. I really wonder, I, I have often reflected on that because there is depopulation going on in our area and in peripheral areas all over the world. But although [00:23:00] it costs a great deal to educate the pupil in Bettyhill, it would cost far more in terms of common humanity to go backwards. 

Will: When you say it would cost far more in common humanity…?

Jim: I think it would finish these, these areas totally.

Because they would then become more unattractive and it would make it less likely that people, people who left would want to come back. I certainly hope that it will continue. And I don’t see why not really, because everything costs more in remote areas. Every single thing. And Britain is one of the biggest economies, one of the richest countries in the world, and it really has to take care of all its people.

And we on the edge here, deserve to be treated the same way as everyone else.

Will: After finishing [00:24:00] school, Rosemary decided that it wasn’t time to go home quite yet. 

Rosemary: I went to university in Edinburgh from Golsby. And I was there for five years, and I landed in London because when I finished my degree in Edinburgh, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

So I landed in London doing voluntary work just to get a feel for … until I knew what I really wanted to do. 

Will: Do you think that the fact that you boarded away from this area for high school, did that have any impact on you deciding to go away and stay away from the area? 

Rosemary: No, I think really, I mean, all the work that I did at home was in local hotels, so it was seasonal work.

It’s not that I didn’t want to come home, I didn’t see how I could come home. I’d just finished a degree. Was I gonna go home and work in the local hotel for the rest of my life? 

Will: Mm-hmm. 

Rosemary: There weren’t options. In order to [00:25:00] move back home after university, I would’ve had to find somewhere to live, have some form of transport. But how could you afford that when you’re not working? It’s a vicious circle, really. So I didn’t see going home as an option. 

Will: One of the focuses of this podcast is why is it that so many young people want to leave the Highlands? 

Rosemary: I didn’t want to leave can I just point out? I didn’t want to leave at all.

I tried everything to get out of even going to university. But again, what was I going to do? 

Will: Years later, Rosemary did return to Mackay Country – at first to take over a local hotel – and she has stayed ever since. 

Rosemary’s story reminds me of something someone once told me was a common saying when they were at school: “To get on, you need to get out.” And while that may hold true for some, I don’t want to give the impression that it’s inevitable. In the next episode, we’ll meet someone who never felt the need to leave Mackay Country — and explore the work being done right now to make staying or leaving feel like a real choice, both options defined by their opportunities rather than their drawbacks

Speaking with Joanna and Lara, students Dylan and Aaron learn how by spending time away, you can broaden your experiences and bring back skills that strengthen the community  – should you choose to return. 

Joanna: Going away is so valid. It is [00:26:00] so important. I would really encourage anybody that has the opportunity or the inclination to really seize it with both hands and make the most of it. 

Lara: As I’ve talked about, I felt really lucky to be from this area, and I think that’s been solidified by going away and coming back.

I think for me it was really important to go away and it’s something I always wanted to do, and I don’t think I’d be so content as a person if I hadn’t gone away and travelled and experienced other things, I would probably feel like I was missing out. And that’s a very personal thing, but for me it’s definitely made me happier now because I feel like I’ve had that experience and it’s been brilliant, but I love being here again, I love being back in the community, but I would encourage going away and experiencing a bit of different life outside of the Highlands, but then hopefully with a view of coming back and, and settling and you know, if they wanted to bring up their own families here. 

Joanna: I sometimes think people that go away are slightly different, not in a weird way, but slightly different to people that haven’t been away because you have to go away to realize what you miss. 

Dylan 1: You visited countries [00:27:00] like Australia, New Zealand, and America. Do you ever regret not moving away and building a family there?

Lara: No, I don’t think I do because I love travelling and I still love travelling, but I feel like wherever I’ve lived, I’ve always missed home a lot. 

Aaron: Do you think that if you hadn’t gone away and experienced outside of the Highlands, would you have been where you are now with your businesses and banking? 

Lara: I think it very much depends on what sector you’re in.

I know people that have moved to new roles and new companies and do that working from home without having to have been physically in a building. I think for me, being able to build the start of my career, like in an office, face to face with people and build those connections and relationships has made it easier then to work from home and be able to have, I guess, the best of both worlds.

Joanna: I mean, a big part of my degree was economics, so I did a lot of supply and demand, and then there was business. And I think that if I didn’t have that grounding, running a business that is effectively based on supply and demand would be, I might have got to where I am now, [00:28:00] but it certainly wouldn’t have been as easy or without as many hurdles. 

Will: Lara has a question for Dylan and Aaron.

Lara: How do you both feel about the area? Is there any kind of competing feeling around staying or do you feel sure of what your path will be once you leave school? 

Aaron: Take it away Dylan.

Dylan 1: I feel like it’s been more normalized to stay rather than to have to leave, but it’s still kind of pressurized.

‘Cause there’s not much, like the only college, they don’t offer the widest range. So you’ve kind of gotta like steer out and like look for more opportunities. So I think it’s probably better to leave so that you can grow and like get more, more opportunity. 

Joanna: Yeah, 

Aaron: I mean, I’ve got a sense, it’s not like I definitely wanna go away and do X, Y, Z, but like I do probably, like a lot of young people up here, I want to go down south and go to the colleges and the unis and get some work there in that. And I’ve always thought, oh, I want to move to like [00:29:00] abroad to another country and see what all that’s like. But ironically enough, doing this podcast stuff has made me consider if I want to stay there or if I want to come back later on.

And I do think it is good for people to go away to get all the experiences of being elsewhere and being in big places and lots of everything really. But it’s good for them to come back and keep the community up here going. So what are your hopes for the future of up here, for your family, your community, and for anyone else who’s thinking of coming back?

Lara: I think my hopes for this place is that a lot of the action that’s happening right now comes to fruition, so around repopulation, around affordable housing in the area, around having a more kind of empowered and engaged community. 

Joanna: I’m now a member of our local community council because we want to try and drive forward those issues, try and encourage accommodation because it [00:30:00] is really difficult. The school struggles to attract teachers, and a big part of that is because they have nowhere to live if they do come here. So we recognize that. And doctors; people wanting to get on the property ladder or just to return home unless you have family or some roots already here, it’s really difficult for people to establish themselves in these communities.

Lara: And I think also on some of the other issues that we’re facing that are not unique to here over tourism and how the community deals with that. And also things like large landowners that the community can work with these people for benefit for the future generations 

Will: This episode has highlighted what needs to change in order to build a resilient future for Mackay Country. 

In our third and final episode of Highlands Reimagined I will be asking who has the power to make this change? Who gets to decide the future of this part of the North Western Highlands? What role do each of us, including visitors, have in helping rather than hindering efforts to build a sustainable future for this beautiful place?

Highlands Reimagined is an Anya Media production for Strathnaver Museum, published in partnership with the Wild for Scotland Podcast.

The executive producers are Fiona Mackenzie for Strathnaver Museum, and Kathi Kamleitner for Wild for Scotland. 

The script editor is Andy Jones. The theme music is by Cameron Mackay.

Thank you to all those who contributed to this series, and a special thank you to the students and staff of Farr High School.

Highlands Reimagined is recorded, edited, mixed and presented by me: Will Sadler.

Find out more at highlandsreimagined.com

The Artist Residency Programme through which this podcast was made was part funded by Museums Galleries Scotland, The William Syson Foundation, the Children’s and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund, and received support from the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

MID POINT INSERT FOR WFS VERSION

This is a short break to say a big thank you to Wild for Scotland Podcast for featuring our mini series on their feed. If you’d like to hear more from Highlands Reimagined, including bonus content, head over to our dedicated feed by searching Highlands Reimagined wherever you get your podcasts. Now, back to the show.

 

MID POINT INSERT FOR HR VERSION

This is a short break to say a big thank you to Wild for Scotland Podcast for supporting this show. Wild for Scotland is an immersive travel podcast offering stories, interviews, and inspiration for Scotland-lovers around the world. To find out more, search Wild for Scotland wherever you get your podcasts. Now, back to the show.

 

Highlands Reimagined Episode 3

From the Ground Up

 

Link: [00:00:00] It’s the first week of the new autumn term and I’m on a video call with the students of Farr High School, in Scotland’s northern Highlands. I’ve been working with them throughout this podcast, and I’m wondering what they think of the show so far. Here’s Gracie.

Gracie: It was cheeky. 

Will: Did You say it was tricky?

Gracie: No, that it was cheeky

Will: Cheeky. The episodes are cheeky?

Gracie: Yeah, yeah.

Will: What? What is that? What is that? What do you mean? 

Gracie: That it’s good. Yeah.

Link:  You are listening to the final episode of Highlands Reimagined, commissioned by Strathnaver Museum and published in partnership with the Wild for Scotland podcast. As many areas of the Scottish Highlands face the challenge of ongoing population decline, this mini series asks what will persuade Mackay country’s young people to stay or return to build their futures here? 

This third and final episode is all about power. Who has the power to build a sustainable future for Mackay Country? We are going to explore the power that we can find in the everyday; the power we [00:01:00] have when communities come together; the power that tourists have -although not the type you might be thinking of- and the power that needs to be shared by others in order for real change to happen.

But before we get into all of that, in the Scottish Highlands, you can’t really talk about power, without talking about land. Here’s Gracie again. 

Gracie: It’s really quite difficult, isn’t it? Because you’ve got the matter of like, families who’ve owned land for so long and you’ve got the matter of like private land being bought up by companies. And a lot of companies coming around snatching up any available land before the community can buy it back from them. And it doesn’t go to the people who actually live there. So I think if priority was given to people who live in the surrounding areas, work in surrounding areas, that would be better.

Link: You are listening to episode 3, From the Ground Up.

 (Stirring pipe music) 

Link: In the Highlands, ‘land’ is a word whispered rather than spoken, for it is not mere soil nor stone, but the very soul of the nation made manifest in soaring, heather-clad peaks and dark, silent lochs… (record scratch) 

Elizabeth [00:02:00] will say: “Will, snap out of it please”

Dr Elizabeth Ritchie, senior lecturer of history at the University of Highlands and Islands is keen to remind me that romanticised stereotypes of Scottish land aren’t merely a bit irritating, but also hold a lot of … well … power.

Elizabeth: Often folks who are very interested in perhaps hill walking, I speak as a hill walker myself, and conservationists come in thinking that this place is an untouched wilderness. That’s just not the case! That is a notion that very much came in through the romantic movement. So let’s not start our debate there ’cause it’s just not the case. It’s a place which has been managed and utilized over generations for hundreds, thousands of years. So let’s acknowledge that it’s not actually an untouched wilderness. It it beautiful and valuable. Yes. Let’s start there. Rather than saying that it’s an untouched wilderness. 

Link: Does the evocative power of an unspoiled view risk blocking developments that could provide more stable, long-term [00:03:00] benefits for the community?

Elizabeth: So the current major concern is both offshore and onshore wind farms. And there are lots of debates to be had on both sides of, of the debate where those things are concerned. But I think the important thing is to start from a basis of what is actually there and have discussions thereafter. It’s really important to acknowledge that there are people in these places that they need to have the fundamental say in what is going on.

And that’s where you need to be speaking to the local people and saying, well, I’m sure you value the view as well, but what else do you value?

And might this mast or small scale wind farm or whatever it is, might the potential damage that is done, for example, to this particular view, be outweighed by potentially community benefits … or not? 

Link: When an economy depends on visitors, at what point does its landscape stop being a [00:04:00] place and start being a product?

Elizabeth: I think when you frame a place as being sort of wild and beautiful, and that’s essentially all that it is, then you’re framing it fundamentally as, a tourist destination.

That means, and you see it happening regularly and visitors themselves even saying that basically, you should be grateful that we’re coming because you rely on us. Well, yeah, tourism is a part, an important part ,of a, of a local economy, of these sorts of, of places. And most tourists, by the way, are far more respectful and interested than that.

But it’s very important that a place doesn’t become a reliant on one element of the economy, like a sort of monoculture because then you get covid or something and every, everything collapses. And also there needs to be an understanding that the tourist economy is very often not one which brings, secure jobs, high paying jobs, or even year round jobs.

Link: They are of course a minority, but I’ve heard so many stories of tourists behaving [00:05:00] badly. The tourist’s power isn’t just in what we buy, but in how we behave, and it’s worth remembering that our holiday spot is someone else’s home. It’s not a playground; it’s a community and a landscape that deserves our respect.

 (Music shift) 

Link: We’ve talked about the power that perceptions of the Highlands can have in influencing its future. But who has the final say so on how land is actually used? 

Well, it turns out that this is such a big issue in Scotland that an entire commission was set up to advise on it. 

Gracie: I’m currently sitting here doing an interview.

Will: And Dylan, could

you just say a few words for me?

Dylan: It’s quite cold today on Wednesday, the 26th of March.

Link: Sound check completed, Gracie and fellow student: Dylan are ready to speak with Dr. Lucy Beattie of the Scottish Land Commission.

Dylan: What is the Land Commission?

Lucy: the Scottish Line established The reasons behind establishing commission were make that there would be a sort of independent body that would have a goal of [00:06:00] reviewing, making recommendations on land related laws and policies, and also about promoting good practice in land ownership management and land use.

Research commissioned by the Scottish Land Commission has shown that Scotland has one of the most iniquitous land systems and that has led to tensions in the past.

. The Land Commission has looked at, how monopolies work in other countries in Europe to discuss and decide, how is a monopoly in the land context, gonna work or not work for our country? And undoubtedly the evidence points to the fact that a diverse and open transparent system of land ownership is much better to bring about different opportunities for different people.

Link: Half of Scotland’s private land is owned by fewer than 500 people. That’s a huge concentration of power when it comes to decisions about how land is used—for example for housing, industry, or conservation. In the face of that, it’s easy to feel powerless.

But what about the [00:07:00] power of the everyday; of starting small with individual actions that strengthen your own prospects or those of your community? Here’s Kynan, another student I’m working with, speaking about volunteering at his local community centre. 

Kynan: I sometimes work in the kitchen, but I also do clean up as well. Like cleaning and just helping out and decorating during a Christmas party and then for Burns night as well. 

Link: And here are Jamie and Dylan, telling me about the jobs they got over their summer break.

Jamie: I’ve been working at a cafe through the holidays and you see a lot of interesting people coming and it’s quite nice.  

Dylan: In the summer I was working at a hotel that is being built up, which is a very different type of work experience it’s been a very good opportunity ’cause I’ve been able to see different routes that I can take and like what can happen if I do decide to stay up here

 (MUSIC BREAK) 

Liam: I went through school till I was 16-year-old. Then [00:08:00] I applied for a couple of apprenticeships 

Link: This is Liam. After finishing school, out of a class of 13 pupils, he was one of only two who stayed in Mackay Country. Everyone else left to pursue opportunities elsewhere.​

Liam: A friend of mine approached me ’cause my old man had a machine that he had on his croft, and he asked me, he says, “oh, would you come and do a shed site for me?” 

Will: What’s a, what’s a shed site? 

Just,

Liam: A site for building a shed on .

And ever since then, it’s gone from one job to another. 

Link: Now, Liam runs an excavator business with his dad. 

Liam: I always wanted to work for myself. What I was gonna be doing, I had no idea. I never liked the idea of being employed and being given instructions on what to do. I always wanted to have that freedom and say, “look, this is what I’m gonna do and it’s on my terms”, type of thing.

If there’s no work, you kind of, it’s strange to say, but you kinda have to make your own work. It’s one foot in front of the other, you just do it slowly. I worked myself [00:09:00] to begin with just little jobies in people’s gardens doing landscaping jobs. Some of the jobs you would get maybe two in a week to do, and then there was nothing else to do then until another job would come in. But obviously word of mouth then would just spread and it went from there, really. 

Link: Liam’s company has been working on the new bridge that is being built on the only road west out of Bettyhill.

Liam: You have to have commitment for it, whatever you do. It’s easy enough to do a job from nine to five, but when you’re trying to keep everything running you have to be a step ahead of everything and that’s, it’s a lot of work in itself, a lot. But as long as I’ve got work to keep me going throughout my lifetime and I can support locals in the area, giving them more work and which keeps them local to the area – I say that’s – it’s all my hopes can be anyway.

Link: Liam’s story is an example of the power that can be found in a determination to forge your own future.

Will: Whose responsibility do think is to [00:10:00] make change for the good in rural areas?

Adrian: The community. 

People need to take control. 

Link: I am sitting in the art classroom with students from Farr High. We’re joined online by Adrian Begley, from Aranmore an island off the coast of Donegal in Ireland. His story is another about taking control of your own future, except in his case it’s about how an entire community took on the challenge.

Adrian: If you wait, if local authority and national authority to do it with the best will in the world, I’m sure they’ve got too many irons in the fire and they’ve got too much stuff going on. There’s a saying that the, the squeaky hinge gets the oil, if you don’t keep knock on the door, if you don’t trying, things aren’t gonna get done. 

And it’s important that people take ownership of the problems that are in their community, but also take ownership and fighting the solutions. 

We have an island council in Arranmore, that was set up, to be an advocate for the community. We don’t have any say in, in, in making [00:11:00] rules or, you know, enforcing laws. That’s not what we do. All we are is, is, is an interlocutor between the community and the powers that be. 

The future’s yours. It’s, you know, it’s up to you to shape. If you don’t shape it, someone will shape it for you.

 

Link: Arranmore may be 300 miles away from Farr High, but I wanted the students to meet Adrian after I came across him whilst researching the final episode. Arranmore has some striking similarities to Mackay Country, a rural community facing population decline, school roles dwindling, not enough houses and young people leaving to build their futures elsewhere. 

Except that this story has a twist.

Adrian: So what we did was we reached out to our diaspora, and our diaspora’s huge. 

They’re all over the world. So we reached out to them and asked them what they wanted, and a lot of young people, who, left home:

Some of them have been very successful app development, and IT, finance, various different industries like that.

But their jobs weren’t jobs they [00:12:00] felt that they could do from here. And the reason was primarily because they didn’t have the connectivity that they needed.

It certainly it lit the touch paper as they say, for us, to go and get something done about this.

 

Link: They launched an ambitious project to install wireless broadband across the island, complete with a new digital hub where Adrian is joining us from. Kynan has a question.

Kynan: How have the types jobs changed since it was installed, and how well paid are the jobs? 

Adrian: It’s everything from, app development, finance insurance, design, graphics. We have got everybody here from, recruiters for major ndustry. There was a big recruiter for Twitter at one point. There was somebody involved in likes of PayPal.

There’s lots of different industries, and these people, have moved back to Arranmore. And they’re now working, some remotely out in here, some remotely from their home. They were well paid jobs. but their disposable income in a like Dublin or London is a whole lot different than disposable income [00:13:00] on a place like Arranmore. Everything’s cheaper here, the property’s cheaper.

We have gone from having one person working remotely on Arranmore, at the start of our project in 2019 to having 18% of our working population now working remotely. And indeed there’s some people moving to Arranmore who are not from here all. They can see the benefits of living a place like this. And they’re able to come here with jobs which ordinarily would be based in the city, but they can now take them with them and, and work out of a place like this.

Link: Alex also has a question.

Alex: What about like hospitals, like healthcare, like what about those?

Adrian: We have got a health center on Arranmore. The fact that I can get an appointment with my doctor in 15 minutes, is, you know, something that you just will not get in a large populated area. 

Link:  The high speed broadband installed at Arranmore’s Medical Centre has enabled real time video consultations with mainland specialists, saving islanders overnight trips to hospitals on the mainland.

 (MUSIC SHIFT) 

Link:  Arranmore’s story is really inspiring and there are many similarities between it and Mackay Country, but there are also many differences as [00:14:00] well. Arranmore is a small island measuring four miles by three, whereas the Scottish Highlands Council area is only a little smaller than Belgium. Because it’s an island, Arranmore’s 500 or so residents are reasonably densely populated whereas Mackay Country has a population density less than that of Lapland. Mackay Country has community councils – which I was impressed to learn include youth representatives – and there are 4 of these that cover the Mackay Country region.

But there’s another similarity that made me want the students to speak to Adrian. One of the students Callan explains.

Callan: Recently the roads have been dug up and they’ve entered cables for fiber optic broadband. So hopefully that helps improve the connection between people 

Link: At the time of recording, in north eastern parts of Mackay Country, Highland Broadband buoyed by private investment and government support is installing superfast broadband. Could digital hubs like the one on Arranmore be brought to this part of the northern Highlands? It’s not a magic fix, and there are large parts of Mackay Country which could be waiting a long time to get connected But I’m interested to find out whether these developments could present new opportunities for well paid jobs in Macakay [00:15:00] Country in the near future? Here’s Dylan.

Dylan: I think it would open up like more like. Working at home type of things and having like the speeds that you need to do tech jobs in like the comfort of your home. 

Link: And Alex

Alex: So if there’s like, like a better broadband, like you can reach out for, uh, more people, better wifi, better connection. That means you can play games lot or more that need more wifi and you can like call friends.

Link: And Kynan tells Adrian what opportunities it might present for him and his classmates.

Kynan: I know a few people in the same class as me. Maybe one or two others are interested in doing something in the tech industry. Maybe game development or designing.

‘ I’m also kind of interested in, in as well, 

Adrian: Yous are young and believe you me, you probably don’t even see the opportunities that are there yet.

But they’re there. And if you see the benefit in the beautiful place that you live in, the beautiful communities that [00:16:00] you just come from, believe you me, the opportunities are there to stay. 

(BREAK)

Link: Finding out precisely what a community wants isn’t necessarily as easy as it might sound. 

After all, a community isn’t one thing. All communities, anywhere, are made up of individuals with their own opinions, agendas and interests, which won’t always align. Arranmore took an unusual approach to choosing how they should be represented.

Adrian: We had an election day and we give everybody in the island who was on the electoral roll, a sheet of paper with five lines on it, and they could put five names on that from anybody in the community who was on the electoral role. And we just went and picked out that, who were the top 15 people.

Their names showed up, we phoned them and we said, “do you wanna be on the council?” [00:17:00] And every single one of ’em said yes, not because they were, they were canvasing, but because they felt a sense of duty to the community, because the community had asked them to represent them. 

  

Link: Balancing the different views within communities is a challenge anywhere -you only have to make the mistake of joining a neighbourhood Whatsapp group in the city I live in to learn that. 

Gracie: If there’s two wildly different viewpoints on a subject, you know, it’s gonna be really difficult to find the middle ground.

Link:  In the Highlands, when it comes to a major project like a new wind farm, it’s completely natural for a community to have a wide range of opinions. Here’s Gracie again, followed by Dylan. 

Gracie: Like was same thing with Brexit where you had like leave and stay and it tore like a lot of cities apart ’cause people couldn’t decide what they wanted With big decisions like that, even though it might not seem big to people from big cities, it’s an important thing through up here.

It’s gonna, it’s gonna have ramifications like that.

Dylan:  It’s gonna make it sound easier than it is, but I think they should do like a survey, I don’t know, something simple. 

Link: Dylan’s onto something here. There need to be ways to [00:18:00] gather people’s views, to find common ground and agree on a plan for the future.   It isn’t easy for sure, in fact it can be really hard. But there are people who are trying to do exactly that in Mackay Country.

Rachel: I think it’s really important that we understanding the knowledge and the expertise, embodied within the communities, it’s there. 

Link: This is Rachel Skeen  from the Regional Land Use Partnership for North West Sutherland: North West 2045.

Rachel: It’s the systems and structures that don’t give agency within the current way of working to see the change happen, because the capacity doesn’t exist within communities. So we were able through this project to help to create capacity. 

Link: The first priority was to create capacity for people to talk and listen; find a safe way for everyone to express views for the future. Sara Harkins is also from North West 2045. 

Sara: I’m the landowner of the Kinlochbervie estate. I think the work that I’ve been doing with Lizzie and Rachel, which has been around [00:19:00] landowners, crofters, and communities working together has been really taking me out of my comfort zone sometimes, but, I think it’s really important work. 

We had, I think over a hundred one-to-one conversations with local people. Often in their homes. And we listened to what they had to say. 

And, and I think that was fascinating and sometimes quite scary. But actually I, I think it reaped benefits because we actually heard what people wanted to talk about 

 I met a lady, who said, “but I can’t, I can’t have an opinion about the land because I don’t own any land and I’m not a crofter”. And I was like, “no, but you of course you have an opinion.” And I think that’s, that, that’s an example of, trying to empower everybody who lives in a community, to have a voice to say what they want. 

 

Link: Lizzie Wilder Williams is the third member of Northwest 2045, I’m chatting with.

Lizzie: In [00:20:00] listening, in having those conversations, um, the links that have formed, not just between, those of us here and those we have been listening to, but between others within the communities, and I think it’s building those trusting relationships.

Will: I want to know more about how they handle disagreements. Part of the approach comes down to finding shared connecting values.

Lizzie: Maybe it’s easier to find common values between people. If you start exploring things like the future generations and it, I think what I’ve observed is that when you start talking about the kids, and what happens in the future and perhaps also our, our old age, then there is more common ground to be found.

Rachel: `I think when there’s the lack of communication, that’s when things can become really dangerously dislocated.

Will: Yeah, completely. Yeah.

Rachel: What we are always trying to test with our work is how are we actually usefully interconnecting with what already exists, rather being yet another layer of [00:21:00] confusion or complexity for communities to have to navigate. 

Link:  Meaningful community consultation takes time. But it’s a difficult balance when you’re facing what I’ve seen described as a “population emergency”. Here’s Sara again talking about the conversations she’s been having with young people in her area.

Sara: From the children and young people’s perspective that there is an urgent necessity for change to happen not within years, but within months. And that’s a really complicated juggle so I think some things are too rushed and they need to be slowed down, but other things need to be speeded up a hundred percent.

So it’s a complicated juggle, isn’t it? 

Link:  Despite the complexity, Northwest 2045 is making tangible progress. According to their latest report, they’ve been part of successful efforts to reopen a childcare service, develop a community manifesto with local schools and are developing affordable housing plans with Boyd, who you heard in the last episode.

T145_Tr4: it’d be interesting to know[00:22:00] like when you leave fifth year or sixth year Are you gonna leave for a wee while and come back, or are you gonna stay or leave forever?

Link: Dr Lucy Beattie from the Scottish Land Commission is interested to know what Gracie and Dylan’s plans are for the future. Here’s Dylan, followed by Gracie.

Dylan: I think when it comes to like thinking about what comes after school. A lot of it involves leaving, but not really looking back. it doesn’t always feel like there’s something to 

Gracie: come back to often.

Yeah, I get that. If I could, I’d want to come back after going to university, but my worry is there won’t be a for me to live in.

T145_Tr4: I think we have to think about more, creative ways of meeting that housing need. And definitely land reform can fit that as well.

 (MUSIC SHIFT) 

Link:  There are tools, one could say powerful tools that rural communities with a clear vision can use to take some control. 

Lucy: THe land ownership landscape in the Highlands has changed a lot in the last 22 years, which is [00:23:00] since we first had the first Land Reform Act, which was in 2003, and gave, , an opportunity in statute for community bodies to make a buyout of their local land.

So since that statute’s come about, we have what’s known as a community right buy. , and that enables a community body to come together to make a proposal, to vote on something or to perhaps register a interest in land.

 Say for example, you are living in a community where there’s not enough housing to, provide affordable housing for people and perhaps your school role is decreasing, a community might decide that they wish to register an interest on a piece of land, and should that land ever come up for sale, they could make a bid to buy it as community group. 

Link:  Coihagh is a peninsular just to the south of Mackay Country on the West Coast. The Land Reform Act is one of several tools that they have used to buy land and assets for community [00:24:00] benefit. Lizzie, who we heard earlier, tells me about it

Lizzie: About 12 years ago, there was an opportunity to establish a, a community development company.

And one of the reasons to do that was to, set up a renewable energy company, which would be able to put up a community owned wind turbine, which we now have, which generates income for the community, which supports staff for the development company, but also has various small grants programs, and, and has enabled through all that, the purchase of a site on which there’s going to be affordable housing. And we just got, planning permission last week.

And all this has been hugely hard work, of course, but the feeling of possibility within this community is palpable, and it’s not just about the money, it’s about the possibility and about what that represents as well. And because we have already had all of that going on, [00:25:00] um, we had the opportunity to take on another piece of community owned land.

And that obviously comes with responsibilities and a, a burden itself. But it’s, um. It’s another huge opportunity. And so I, I find it really helpful to look back over those 12 years and think of all the hard work and what was the nugget that created that opportunity? And was it, sort of the alchemy of bringing together the, just the right combination of people?

Maybe it was, and we were very lucky, having said that, the school role is at its lowest that it’s ever been, I think. I think we are at a sort of nadir and about to, lift off.

And so my vision for the future is full primary school. On the off chance that my son doesn’t make it as a professional footballer (LAUGH) , that he will be able to come back and, um, and have a future here. 

Link: My main takeaway from this series is that the question of how to get more young people to build their lives in Mackay Country is incredibly complex. It’s a [00:26:00] huge topic, tangled up in centuries of history, ongoing debates like land reform, and the strange way perceptions of this place can sometimes feel like they override the lived reality of the community.

When the students talk about what they value, something they keep returning to is being genuinely listened to. Here’s Kai, who you have heard from throughout the series.

Kye: I’d like for young people to actually have more of a voice, it may be that stuff is happening behind the scenes and we just aren’t being made aware of it Like stuff’s being put through the system and it’s just taking forever and we are getting no feedback out of it just more communication from the people up at the top who are in charge of things that we are asking to be changed. 

Link: I’m back on the video call this episode began with. I want to know, if they could design – from scratch – a process for gathering and acting on young people’s opinions, what would it look like? Here’s Gracie. 

Gracie: LIke, you know, ventriloquists,

If a kid could like ventriloquise an [00:27:00] adult and you speak into their ear and then they rehash your points out loud, we would go SO far. 

Will: That is a great idea.

Gracie: I know, I’m full of them. Gracie Jones from Farr high school.

Will: Nice one. Have you got any thoughts, Dylan?

Dylan: I mean, thinking in terms of likee something possible,

Will: Alright. Spoil sport. Mr. Sensible over here?

Dylan: I feel like something really simple because I feel like if it was like a hassle, we wouldn’t really care. We’d just probably just ignore it and that’s what I would do. But like if it’s something simple and it’s like something you can do like in a matter of seconds, it’s like an app or something. You can go on it and write something anonymous and it just gets sent off and I don’t really think about it. I just, it’s just, I don’t, my thoughts, as long as it’s not like too like hard to do.

Link: In our first episode, the strength of community was the main reason why young people said they’d want to stay here. Now, at the end of our final episode and from all the conversations throughout this series, I want to know what Dylan and Gracie think are the other most powerful arguments to persuade a young person from Mackay Country to stay, or return and build their futures here.

Gracie: I think it’s quite good for mental health getting away from like the hassle and the, [00:28:00] um, bustle of the city. , it’s you in the ocean as well, that always quite soothing, quite calming

Dylan: It’s like very peaceful and calm up here, I feel like the crime rates are low. 

Gracie: There’s less noise. Less noise. Pollution. Light pollution. You can see the stars at night as well.

That’s quite nice that like, I was like gobsmacked when I looked up at the sky I can see the constilations, that was really cool.

Dylan: It’s just easygoing. Less stress and hassle. You know what you’re doing. It’s pretty straightforward.

I was going to say it’s healthier.  

Gracie: Cleaner air. 

Dylan: That’s what I was gonna say. How often do you like breathe and be like, yes, oxygen? 

Gracie:  I can feel it in my lungs.

You can tell. 

Dylan: Can you? 

Gracie: It’s like a good place for you to live. Not to mention all the nature around. You’re surrounded by the plants and the foliage and the other one was at one shop. It’s really great.

Link: I began this series with the idyllic memory of a childhood holiday, a picture of a beautiful, peaceful landscape. A place my family chose to visit. 

But for young people growing up here, the choice of whether to stay or to leave is far more complex, one that weighs up concerns over careers, affordability of housing, access to health care, schools and so much more. 

Throughout the series we have heard how change is happening, how people’s stories speak of a growing powerful movement to make “staying” a more viable choice. We’ve heard how remote working, community buyouts, entrepreneurship and house building are creating new opportunities to make this a reality.

So much of what I’ve learnt whilst making this series is so applicable in other parts of the country, in other parts of the world. I think we could all learn a lot from the challenges that Mackay Country is grappling with as well as the solutions that are being explored to overcome them.

And those challenges remain significant. But so is the resilience of the people living here – people of all generations who are determined to shape their own futures, and ensure their region is not defined by one-dimensional picture postcard views of the Highlands but by the more complex reality that makes it home.

 

Highlands Reimagined is an Anya Media production for Strathnaver Museum, published in partnership with the Wild for Scotland Podcast.

The executive producers are Fiona Mackenzie for Strathnaver Museum, and Kathi Kamleitner for Wild for Scotland. 

The script editor is Andy Jones. The theme music is by Cameron Mackay.

Thank you to all those who contributed to this series. A special thank you to the students and staff of Farr High School, and in particular to Aaron, Alex, Callan, Dylan S, Dylan M, Gracie, Jamie, Kye, Kynan and also to Tracy Richardson – their teacher – without whom this whole project would simply not have been possible. 

Highlands Reimagined is recorded, edited, mixed and presented by me: Will Sadler.

Find out more at highlandsreimagined.com

The Artist Residency Programme through which this podcast was made was part funded by Museums Galleries Scotland, The William Syson Foundation, the Children’s and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund, and received support from the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

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