correctly.crazy.example

Part 1 of the tale of the diminutive archer Iain Beag Macandra. A group of caterans go raiding by the light of the Michaelmas moon. Little do they realise that the hounds are already on their trail.

Fragments of Iain Beag Macandra

Iain Beag Macandra Part 1 | correctly.crazy.example

missions.dreamers.showdown

Iain Beag Macandra Part 3. The hounds celebrate a great victory.

Iain Beag Macandra Part 3 | missions.dreamers.showdown

bystander.catchers.sensible

Iain Beag Macandra Part 2.

Day break finds the caterans in the hills between the Findhorn and Dulnain rivers. Their captain decides that they must rest until nightfall at a sheiling called Clachglas.

Iain Beag Macandra Part 2 | bystander.catchers.sensible

The story of Joan Eardley's 1955 painting 'The Clipping'. 

https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-clipping-1955-215261

For several years in the '50s Eardley spent time at Caverslea, the country bolt-hole of Lord and Lady Walker, there she painted some iconic works including 'The Clipping'. What did the Border's sheep farming community make of their unusual visitors? Residents of the farm, where Eardley painted, recall life in the '50s.

With thanks to Annie Davidson and Sheila Stenhouse.

The Artist, The Judge, and The Photographer.

Nan Fraser of West Limekilns talks of her life on a moorland croft in the '50s. Part of Grantown-on-Spey Museum's Dava Project. 

With thanks to Nan Fraser.

Nan Fraser of West Limekilns

Voices from Dava Moor. A lost community. A lost way of life. 

With thanks to the people of Dava. A clip from Grantown -on -Spey Museum's Dava Project 2019-2021.

Dava Project

Voices From the Moor

Sound Farm is an audio journey from Edinburgh to the Fallago wind farm following the line of sight which links these two places and those in between.

This artwork aims to highlight differing perspectives that people have of wind turbines and bring wind power closer to the centre of the city. Renewable energy infrastructure is becoming increasingly important, yet the impact of this infrastructure on people’s live is borne disproportionately. Through my artwork I want to encourage people to actively think about renewable energy: what does it look like? What does it sound like? Why do we need it? Where should we site it? What do we value in our landscapes?
The artwork can be downloaded from soundcloud and taken to the following location: atoms.steer.terror (Top of the Duddingston community orchard) at exactly 20 minutes before sunset. When you reach the grid square stop and begin the recording. The sound artwork will run for seven minutes which is the duration of time that the turbines sited on the border hills are visible for from Edinburgh each day. Only when the sun is at the right height in the evening are the turbines visible to the naked eye. As the recording begins to play walk forward to the bench at happen.glory.winks. This is 160 metres away; 160 metres being the height from base to tip of the 48 turbines which make up the Fallago Rig wind farm. When you reach the bench, please feel free to sit and listen through to the end of the recording. When the sound recording is listened to at this time and in this place, it offers a fleeting visual and audio connection with another place.

Sound Farm

If the walls of Paxton House could speak, what stories would they tell? 

The setting for this conversation is the drawing room at Paxton House in 1815. It involves two men: George Home of Wedderburn and John Fairbairn. George Home inherited both Paxton House and the Grenadian plantation of Waltham from his elder brother Ninian in 1795. Needing a trustworthy representative to manage his affairs in Grenada, George decided to send John Fairbairn to Grenada to manage Waltham. Fairbairn was born in Berwickshire in 1773. He was from lowly origins and had been in the employment of the Home family for eight years by the time that he arrived in Grenada in 1798. There, he established himself as a reliable and economical manager, helping to restore the fortunes of the plantation and commanding the respect of the white community. In 1814, after sixteen years away from Scotland, Fairbairn expressed a desire to return home to Berwickshire. George Home encouraged Fairbairn to visit home; however, Fairbairn eventually decided to remain in Grenada. He would die in 1820 without ever returning home. George Home pre-deceased him by several months.
Based entirely upon the original wording of surviving correspondence between Home and Fairbairn, this dialogue imagines the conversation that these two men might have had about slavery, had Fairbairn returned to Scotland in Autumn 1815. 
At this point we wish to emphasise that the views espoused by Home and Fairbairn are not those of the Paxton Trust. Likewise, the Paxton Trust does not wish to condone or promote the attitudes towards people of Black or African Caribbean heritage expressed by Home and Fairbairn. The Paxton Trust feels that modern-day visitors to Paxton House should be made aware of the views held by those associated with the house in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the Transatlantic slave economy is an integral part of Paxton’s history. In the following conversation you will hear actors, in the Drawing Room at Paxton House, reading from the abridged correspondence between Home and Fairbairn. In these letters they discuss an issue which they considered to be of great importance: how to maintain the number of enslaved people upon the plantation without transporting more enslaved people from Africa. They also discuss their fears about the ongoing abolition movement in Britain.

Narrator - Fiona Salvesen Murrell 
George Home - Charles Fletcher
John Fairbairn - Jim Herbert

(Photo credit: The Paxton Trust)

About Slavery

Charles Fletcher

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