Moving Arts

Moving Arts was formed in 1982 by four artists working in different fields to help stimulate artistic activities in the Highlands and Islands. The four artists were sculptor Gerald Laing, theatre director Andi Ross, musician Robin Williamson and visual artist, Lizzie MacDougall

Over the years we have organised a wide range of events, including festivals celebrating contemporary celtic creativity, special events exploring the links between the Caledonian and Amazonian forests, workshops and performances in music, dance, drama and animation and many visual arts projects including community banners and murals.

One of the first exhibitions we organised was called 'Seven artists living and working in the Highlands' which we toured to seven venues during the winter. The artists were chosen because their work reflected the impact living in the Highlands had on them. Artists came from all over: Caithness, Sutherland, Ross-shire and Inverness-shire but somehow, amongst the selected seven were two artists connected to Coll: Francesca Porrelli and Mairi Hedderwick. It was then that I thought of visiting this island which had nurtured these talented women.

Many years later I eventually managed a holiday on Coll and was as smitten and blown away as so many before me. After this visit I went on to Iona and began work on 'The Eagle and the Dove', a show about the meeting between St Columba and the King of the Picts. We toured this show extensively during 1997. We took advantage of the Mallaig to Coll ferry that was running at that time to fit in a performance between a show on Skye and shows on Iona and Mull.

It seemed that most of the island had turned out for 'The Eagle and the Dove' and certainly lots of children came to the shadow puppet workshops the following day. Everyone enjoyed these short sessions so much that Tammie and I started to explore ways to develop more such projects.

In the summer of '98 we returned to Coll with most of our equipment to run open workshops. Our visit coincided with the wonderful exhibition of old photographs put on by the Business Centre and Island Craft Enterprises at the Gallery in the Pier Shed.

With the help of Esther MacRae, the District Nurse, Tammie organised a wee tea party for the senior citizens. Many of the photographs were of Sorasdal and, inspired by Mrs Sliep's description of life there when she was a child, at which time there were around seventy people living there, we arranged a sketching trip to Sorasdal. The children all drew interesting views and Aina, from Sweden who was spending a year on the island as an au pair, particularly surprised herself with a lovely drawing of the wee thatched cottage on the shore.

During the very many rainy days we set up a shadow puppet animation studio in the hall. The children worked on three themes: the older girls illustrated a talk by Charlie on corncrakes, which had already been recorded on film; the boys recreated a very dramatic version of the Viking invasion of Coll and their subsequent defeat by the clever Morag, and the little girls retold the mermaid and the fisherman tale in their own unique way.

Julianna visited these workshops with some beautiful puppets which had belonged to her great uncle and told the children how, years ago, before television, her uncles would entertain the children of the island with these puppets. It was great to discover that there was history of puppetry on Coll. We filmed all of this on digital video.

Our visit also coincided with the Coll Show, so we filmed some of that and the band, so that their music could be used in the eventual video. We asked Alex, who had won so many prizes for his garden entries if we could film his garden. Unfortunately, the incessant rain meant that we did not manage this until our next visit in September, but Alex's garden was still quite stunning. He was making carrageen soup and he told us that we should ask Katina where to find carrageen. So off we went to film Katina as well who told us many amusing stories and talked about how much she enjoyed the Gaelic television and radio programmes and about how important these are to native Gaelic speakers.

Also during the September visit we did another puppet project at the school on some of the other birds that are found on Coll (birds other than the corncrake, that is). We also filmed Hughie, whose reminiscences are worthy of a film of their own. His tales of the war and the friendships that he made are truly inspiring.

All in all we left Coll with five hours of great video footage. The challenge now is to edit this into a twenty minute video - the wonders of modern computers and digital technology mean that many different versions could be made. Moving Arts hopes that anyone from Coll who wishes to will get involved in the editing process.

I hope that the video will be on show at the Coll Business Centre and anywhere else that is thought appropriate and that the video will be of interest to the whole community. From the footage it is clear that there is much to be learned and enjoyed from both the old and the young, the old and the new, which is all very fitting during these millennium days.

Lizzie MacDougall