Monday 30 June 2008

Setting up camp.

 A big thanks to Alisdair and Anne Marie at Shetland College who performed minor miracles today enabling us to set up a great base camp and studio space for the 5 days of workshops with ILP service users we have ahead.... starting tomorrow!
a gentle shetland wind?
Its a great space we have been provided with and i'm
looking forward to the exciting ideas that everyone comes up with in here!

Sunday 29 June 2008

Favourite things


 A stunning display of bog cotton plants (an all time favourite) welcomed me when I arrived on the island on Saturday. Also really impressive was the show of colour from bog mosses and wildflowers, particularly at roadside verges where presumably they are safer from grazing animals. 

Earlier this year.....some of the team at the site...



Who are the partnership agencies?

The Independent Living Project
The ILP provides supported accommodation for adults with learning disabilities. It aims to provide high quality service for adults with learning disabilities who have their own tenancies within the community. It provides tenants with the right amount and type of support so they can have the kind of life experience most of us take for granted. The ILP is a local government project, which is part of Shetland Islands Council's Education and Social Care Services.
Shetland Arts Development Agency
SA is Shetland's lead arts body. Formed in early 2006, it brought together the work of two organisations whose collective histories provide Shetland Arts with a local, national and international reputation for arts development and delivery built over twenty years of work and innovation.
Shetland Arts today runs the Garrison Theatre, Bonhoga Gallery, and promotes a year round programme of music, theatre literature and visual arts and crafts events. It also delivers arts development activity across a range of art forms through a dedicated team of specialist art form officers. On the horizon is a new music and cinema venue for Shetland with an estimated opening date of Spring 2010.
Hjaltland Housing Association
was created from a merger between Scottish Homes Ltd, formed in 1974 and the then Hjaltland Housing association, formed in 1975. These associations were originally formed to aid the Shetland Islands Council in providing housing for incoming oil industry workers. Up until 1982 the association provided 88 houses , most of which were family houses.
Prior to 1984, administration was carried out in Edinburgh until a review concluded that an improved service would require fulltime Shetland staff. Since then 424 properties have been purchased or constructed, distributed across Shetland, from Unst to Sumburgh and Sandness to Whalsay.

Describing the Created Space project

In March  2009, collaboration between the Independent Living Project and Hjaltland Housing Association will see 11 new properties, providing up to 13 tenancies, coming on stream, in Lerwick, Shetland.  The tenancies are within a purpose built core and cluster development, at the centre of which is an outdoors area, which offers the possibility of creating a unique space. 
In 2007 conversations between Shetland Arts Development Agency, ILP, Hjaltland Housing and Shetland College forged a partnership resulting in 'Created Space', a  project which has recruited two artists, Janet McEwan, and Kristi Cumming to work alongside ILP service users through the process of creating a garden in this new space.

One created space after another

One created space : the sublime St Ninian's Isle, which lies off the southwest coast of mainland Shetland, where 28 silver objects from an early Christian monastic settlement were found by a schoolboy during an excavation in 1958. What has been described as 'the most important single discovery in Scottish archaeology' is returning to Shetland for the first time in over 40 years, and will be on display in Lerwick Museum next week. There is great excitement about this and I will definately be going along to see the treasure.