Me, My Island, My World
(Workshops, 2016)
'Me, My Island, My World' was a collaborative project with service designer Kaajal Modi. Both of us wanted to work on a project anchored in the personal politics of place and how that affected young people and their thoughts about their future. We worked with An Lanntair, an arts and cultural space on the Isle of Stornaway to develop a group of creative workshops focused around finding opportunities to talk with young people about their hopes for the future.
In Stornaway there is a strong connection between young people and the protected industries (such as Stornaway Black Pudding, Stornaway seaweed, Stornaway cheese, Stornaway salt) that exist there. At the same time there are cultural pulls from the mainland of Scotland for young people to leave and study; to complicate matters there is then a statistical tendancy for young people to return after their education and work in those same protected industries.
What we discovered were a wide range of thoughts and opinions about the island, what was missing, and what was already working. Some children were very ambitious in their hopes for the island ('I wish for real dinosaurs'), while others were more realistic ('Better swimming facilities'). At the end of the project we held a parents evening, where we shared the outcomes of our workshops with parents from the island.
