Caithness residents invited to share Covid-19 experiences for national memorial programme

A new website has launched to give communities and individuals in Highland the chance to collectively remember, reflect on, heal from, and mark the pandemic.

Residents in Caithness are being urged to share their Covid-19 experiences for a national memorial programme. The newly launched Highland Memory Space website features almost 20 different activities for people to try out. Inspired by the five senses, each activity is designed to be easy and accessible, with options for groups and families as well as for individuals.

There will also be a series of workshops and events announced shortly. These will take place across Highland.

The project is all part of Remembering Together, a national programme of remembrance managed by Greenspace Scotland, bringing together communities and artists and creative practitioners in collective acts of reflection, remembrance, hope and healing.

In Highland, creative trio Sinéad Hargan (Caithness), Cat Meighan (Inverness) and Hector MacInnes (Skye) have been commissioned to deliver the project with support from Lyth Arts Centre. This first phase will gather feedback and ideas, before being presented for a second stage of realising how Highland communities would like to commemorate the pandemic.

Cat said: "For this project we want to capitalise on our diverse skills and our geographical reach to offer a sensory and sensitive approach to exploring the Highlands’ experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. It will creatively explore sense and memory, asking what remembering the pandemic might look, sound, smell, taste or feel like. This might be sound walks, or a bring-a-dish event, revisiting those five-mile boundary walks or garden cuppas.

"Really it’s an opportunity to celebrate the commonalities highlighted by the past three years, and the communities that came together, as well as giving space to be sensitive to the grief and loss that we experienced during this time."

To find out more and take part visit: www.highlandmemory.space/

You can also email: hmspace@lytharts.org.uk to get involved.

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