What’s been happening…
We’ve continued our songwriting workshops with Andi Neate. This process has been fun, reflective and illuminating. Pluse we’ve now finished the words and melody of Landscape and community love song. Just a few last efforts required in arranging parts for singing and we’re already looking for local voices to join our rehearsals for a performance at Gairloch Museum on the 7th of September.
Local artist, Roseanne Wiseman, has been working on our Story tent’s visual art panels. Some will be decorated with nature art already produced as part of our nature connection activities – others will be Roseanne’s interpretation and contributions based on her own reflections and other stories shared with the project.
On the 25th July there was a good turn out of keen helpers at our Copse and Loggers event. Armed with pruning shears, loppers and saws, our helpers cleared regrowth from and expanded and area beneath the tree canopy in the small copse area at Maclennan Park. The result was not just another wee area for people to explore and play, but also a list of suggestions and ideas for making this are into an enchanting green space to use for outdoor learning and play. In payment for their labour and suggestions, there was food and drinks, fire side Marshmallows and even a sneak preview of our Aultbea Song!
Celebrate Boom Beach – voted one of the favourite outdoor places by our postcard respondents, Boom Beach at Mellon Charles was the location for our celebration of this lovely, sheltered beach, home to many stories of social history and interesting natural history. With contributions and activities from collaborators Peter Cunningham (WRFT), Fiona Mackenzie (Aberdeen Science Centre) and Ailsa Maclennan (Seawilding) folk were able to go that bit further and explore and connect with Marine life using nets and an ROV to go beneath the wave, find out what is in our blue spaces and how we can care for what lives there.
Food at both events was provided by the Gale centre and was well received (well perhaps not the first batch of sausages I incinerated over the fire at Boom beach) but thanks to Gale to helping to cater the events and to all our participants and collaborators for making the events so informative, fun and connected.
Happening now
Our Stories so far sessions – The first of our project’s look at the stories shared so far with our team. Across a varied range of activities over the past 8 months members of the local community have kindly taken the time to write and speak and share tales of connections to and stories about Aultbea area, their attachment to the landscape and to nature. Now we’re asking folk to get involved in finding out what these stories can tell us about how we can stay well as individuals and as a community and also pick out areas that can make up our trail of Aultbea Area Stories.
Look Out for
Rehearsals and outdoor performances of our Song of Aultbea Area – If you live in area and would like to share in our Aultbea Song and have a sing, then get in touch and you could add your voice to the throng! (see poster in GDT for more details)
Aultbea Stories exhibition at Gairloch Museum 7th September 4-6pm
We’ll be having an exhibit of some of our Stories so far, with examples of our Story Art work and details on what the project has been working towards as part of the Museums festival of Story Telling. This will be an opportunity to take a look at what has been shared, how the trail is shaping up, hear our Song of Aultbea AND another chance to add your stories to our collection.
For more information about Aultbea Stories Project take a look at our online digital space at https://padlet.com/aultbeastories/ask_the_community
