Strathnaver Museum & Mackay Country Community Trust Moving Times & Museum Tales
A Part of Who We Are
Will Sadler – Museum Video Artist in Residence
For 10 years Will Sadler has run Arpeggio Films (www.a-films.co.uk): a production company based in Newcastle that specialises in producing films with the voluntary, public and cultural sectors – including extensive work with museums and galleries. Through the company, he also managed the multi-award winning Beacon Hill Film Project (2005-2011), which supports young filmmakers with learning disabilities to create and exhibit their own work. In 2011, Beacon Hill Film Project became a separate social enterprise called “Beacon Hill Arts” (www.beaconhillarts.org.uk) where Will has an ongoing role as the Development Director.
Will’s Residency
“A Part of Who We Are”, a short film.
As someone who usually has to follow a very specific brief given to me by a client, I found the freedom to create something of my own inspired by a museum object or theme a very exciting, but also quite daunting task, especially as there are so many starting points one could choose. Of course the Clearances form a core reason for the museum’s establishment, but after talking to people during my research trips, I felt that any reference to the Clearances in the film would have to be from an alternative perspective than a straightforward historical account. Following my initial visit in April, I spent a week in May having lots of meetings with numerous people who could offer advice on a number of themes that I had identified from the museum ranging from the Clearances, to fishing, emigration, industry and ceilidhs and created a first draft film outline. I realised that the place that kept returning to me in my mind was the ruined village of Poulouriscaig, two miles from Armadale. Poulouriscaig is a coastal resettlement village where people cleared from Strathnaver were moved to and I’d met Chris Mackay, whose people came from there. His wife, Margaret had told me that Poulouriscaig was “famous for its ceilidhs” and that “you could always tell there was a ceilidh in Poulouriscaig because you’d see the lights of the lanterns making their way up the hill”. This image stuck in my mind. What really struck me was that this isolated village: a difficult place to get to, to live in and make a living – created as a result of a forced displacement of people from their ancestral homes - was nevertheless a welcoming place where you could socialise and share language, stories, music and culture. This is when I had the idea for “A Part of Who We Are”: a film that tells the story of Poulouriscaig, its famous ceilidhs – and explores the ongoing role and social tradition of ceilidhs in today’s Mackay Country.
If I had to choose one moment that summed up my experience, it’d be when I was working on creating the sequence in the film where footage of one of the ruined cottages that stands in Poulouriscaig dissolves gradually into a picture of the cottage as it was. The picture hangs pride-of-place above Chris Mackay’s mantelpiece – and was drawn in the early 1900s by a visitor to a ceilidh in the village. I had spent ages trying to find the same position from where the visitor had drawn the cottage – and after much searching- came upon a rock which, when I sat down, matched the view depicted in the picture perfectly. To know that I was sitting in exactly the same place, capturing exactly the same image where someone had also sat over 100 years before was quite a moving experience.
Creation of The “Virtual Artefacts”: Working with Museum Staff and Farr High School
I was keen to spend some of my time training museum volunteers in how to use and get the most out of a “Flip Camera” – a very basic camcorder. I bought a camera for the museum and delivered 5 training sessions to a total of 8 volunteers in how to create a simple 30 second film cut to a voice over. Using these skills, volunteers created several “Virtual Artefacts”: 30 second films describing particular objects brought in during the Roadshow events. They are available to view on the museum’s YouTube channel (see below).
I also spent a day at Farr High School, and ran a workshop with 9 students there. The students had all been given Flip Cameras in advance of the workshop, and asked to take shots of something that summed up “home” for them. During my session, they chose their favourite clips, edited them using free software (Windows Live Movie Maker) and added an explanatory voiceover. You can see some of these films on the museum’s YouTube channel
