The Highlands and Islands of Scotland have a distinctive identity and present particular challenges to arts development, writes Marcus Wilson.
HI-Arts is the arts development agency for the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Let?s put that in context. The region in which we work is one of the least populated areas of the European Union, but is of a similar size to Switzerland. It stretches from the Shetland Isles in the north to the Isle of Arran in the south. The region has a dispersed population of just 400,000, but attracts over four million tourist visitors every year. Of course, the Highlands and Islands have a rich cultural heritage, with strong Gaelic and Norse influences. The arts sector of the region is thriving, boasting a frighteningly high proportion of musicians, visual artists and craft makers per capita. Indeed, many artists are drawn to the area for its spectacular scenery and unique way of life.
The arts organisations of the region tend to be small to medium scale, and many are volunteer or community-led. The sector comprises over 150 galleries, 60 arts festivals, a dozen professional theatre companies and a similar number of dedicated arts centres.
Since its inception in 1991, HI-Arts has always used advances in technology to address the challenges of developing and delivering the arts in a predominantly rural environment with dispersed communities. Indeed, HI-Arts introduced the Screen Machine mobile cinema ? essentially an articulated lorry which folds out to become a 102-seat, air-conditioned cinema ? to give more remote and island communities access to the latest film releases.
Similarly, HI-Arts has used its web resources as the perfect tool to make sense of the dispersed and grassroots nature of the region?s arts sector, for both local audiences and for the many potential tourist visitors and expatriate Highlanders and Islanders from across the globe. As an arts development agency, we have always collated events information from across the region. We used to rely on local press to distribute this information as a quarterly supplement to a regional newspaper, but this tended to be out-of-date by the time it was published so, in the late 1990s, we made this resource available on the web.
In 2001, we updated this basic web listings service to a Content Management System, which enabled us to take control of our web resources. This system comprises various ?modules? ? editorial, news, discussion forum, online forms and an events database. Our site is compliant with many of the emerging standards for good practice online, and offers printer-friendly pages and alternative text-only versions of every page for those with visual impairments.
By June 2003, HI-Arts complemented its online events guide by launching a major online Arts Journal for the region. We had long complained about the lack of coverage of arts from the Highlands and Islands in both the UK and Central Belt-based Scottish press. It seemed that none of the media had the budgets to make the trip north. There had also always been a dearth of arts coverage in the region?s local press. The online Arts Journal was conceived as a direct reaction to these challenges. The Arts Journal retains a freelance commissioning editor, whose job it is both to contribute features, and to source, train and commission new writers and reviewers from right across the region. This ties in with our programme of writing development, and gives local writers an international platform to showcase their work.
We are currently working with the Scottish Arts Council to pilot the first national crafts portal for Scotland and, in the autumn, we hope to launch online ticketing resources for the region. The introduction of centrally supported but locally administered online ticketing will allow community venues, festivals and promoters across the region to process credit and debit card bookings ? many for the first time. We hope that it will also help to address a culture of late, or doors, booking across the region by providing a channel for early ticket sales. At the same time, it will offer a mechanism by which arts organisations can capture more comprehensive and comparable data on their customers to develop better direct marketing practices.
The use of new technologies in arts development has been a huge learning experience for all of us at HI-Arts, but has been a vital part of our efforts to work to co-ordinate activities over a large and disparate region.
Marcus Wilson is Audience Development Co-ordinator for HI-Arts.
w: http://www.hi-arts.co.uk. HI-Arts? web resources won both the Scottish and UK finals of the Broadband Britain Challenge 2003 in the public sector category.