Skye Landscape Project
Highland Councillors today (Thursday) backed a major international environmental arts event which will take place in the Trotternish area of North Skye later this summer. It is intended that the environmental animation project at The Storr will be replicated in another Highland location during Highland 2007, the year when Scotland celebrates Highland culture, and then again in the future. Organised by the Scottish-registered environmental arts charity, "NVA", the £855,000 Storr Project attracted the final piece of the funding package from The Highland Council, whose contribution is £80,000. Other organisations supporting the project include the National Lottery; the National Endowment for Science, Technology and Arts; the Scottish Arts Council; PRS Foundation; Esmee Fairburn Foundation; LEADER+; Skye and Lochalsh Enterprise and Highland 2007.
Of international significance, the project will run from 1 August - 17 September, 2005, attracting an estimated 10,000 people. It will entail illuminated late evening walks into one of Western Europe’s most dramatic and important landscapes, which will be highlighted with the most recent technology without affecting the environment.
The event aims to be a celebration of geology and cultural history highlighting the connections between ‘people’ and ‘place’. On completion, the project will leave behind the legacy of an upgraded and extended length of footpath at one the Council’s most popular countryside sites; a bank of specialist equipment to enable similar projects to take place at other Highland locations and a pool of trained guides, group leaders, technicians and site construction workers.
John MacDonald, The Council’s Area Manager for Skye and Lochalsh, said in a report to the Counckil: "This project will enhance Skye’s reputation as a visitor destination and produce economic benefits for the island as a whole. The project will also provide a personal memorable experience for each visitor and will strengthen the Highland’s standing as an area that values its culture, heritage and environment and celebrates its traditions in dynamic ways.
The Storr Project will act as a lead into 2007 – the Year of Highland Culture, and assist in marketing the Highlands generally, and the 2007 programme in particular, to national and international arts, cultural and environmental interest groups. The experience gained on Skye will be used to mount a similar project at another Highland location in 2007."
The organisation behind the project, NVA, works primarily to create site specific environmental events and projects. Over the past decade the company has built up a reputation for producing highly-ambitious and complex shows in unusual exterior locations. One of the company’s best known projects – The Path, which took place in Glen Lyon, Perthshire in 2000 - brought NVA a high profile across Europe and the recently completed Hidden Gardens project in Glasgow has won every public agency design award in the UK in its first year.