December 2003 ArtsRant: City of the Highlands (1)

When Highland Councillors of rural wards, having divined the mood of their electorate, ask why their hard earned money should go towards static arts establishments such as Eden Court Theatre, they have a point. Rarely are their people able to attend performances and, when they can, the demands of transport and time act almost as an additional tax.

Movable feasts such as those delivered by the Highland Festival, and those parachuted in by such as Scottish Opera, are often brilliant but have no audience development capability. Increasing numbers, interest and appreciation takes time and determination.

The City of Inverness seems to get it all and what goes elsewhere can look like crumbs fallen from the table. Divisions between us are making themselves felt in ways that are not entirely positive and the Council’s slow retreat from the Highland Festival will, at least in part, be one of them. However, if resentments exist there must be reasons, symptoms perhaps of some wider disaffection. Changes have happened under our noses over such a period of time they have hardly been noticed. Notice, in fact, has been avoided because it involves the intangible and difficult, sensitive matter of identity. This is where to look.

When local government was reorganised most of Scotland went the way of the District Councils, they being sensibly sized areas with strong regional identities. At the same time the cities, I mean the real cities, became autonomous. In Highland though, the notions of head count and tax base prevailed and we became a sparsely populated region larger than some countries. Put another way, the urban-rural divide was ignored. Later Inverness was made a city but this was recognition, surely, rather than creation.

What was not recognised though, was that the boundary of Inverness by no means contains Scotland’s newest, fastest growing, most dynamic and interactive community. For many years working people have been jumping in their cars and travelling to the hub, to the office, the factory, the studio. Others have been moving in the opposite direction to industrial units located in Dingwall, in Alness, in Nairn.

Here lies the first recognition. The ideas of Nairn-shire, Ross-shire, Inverness-shire, are not what they were and hold their power mostly by a form of nostalgia. The second recognition is that the single community that is dispersed around the Inner Moray Firth in historic towns and villages is as ill served by present arrangements as the genuinely rural areas. The reality of the new City is that it is much larger than the old Burgh of Inverness. That being so, what are its real boundaries?

The geography includes the Cromarty Firth from Invergordon through to Dingwall, Muir of Ord to Beauly and all of the Black Isle, from Beauly through Inverness and on to Nairn. There is a county boundary between Beauly and the Muir; so what? Nairn is the capital of an ancient County? Not any more. Not really. There is more green than you can imagine in any city, much of it active working farmland? That is to the good. The 21st century environment must be cleaner than any since the Industrial revolution.

Water is everywhere in the new City, not just in the River Ness and the Beauly Firth, but also in the Cromarty Firth and rivers such as the Conon and the Alness. The new City’s eastern boundary, its immense coastline, looks towards Scandinavia, Poland, the Baltic States. These are auld acquaintances all; natural places to seek economic and cultural partners.

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