On the way back from Orkney, and the many delights of the St Magnus Festival, we stopped off in Thurso to pay a first visit to the new Caithness Horizons centre, which has transformed the former Thurso Town Hall and Carnegie Library.

Caithness Horizons has come about through a partnership between many major agencies, most notably the UK Atomic Energy Authority, the Highland Council, and Highlands and Islands Enterprise.  It is hugely impressive.  We spent an engrossing hour exploring its displays and, had time permitted, we could easily have spent at least a further hour.  Several other visitors seemed similarly drawn in, and I understand that visitor numbers, since the opening, have been hugely encouraging.

This is a difficult time to open a major new museum, as the National Trust for Scotland can testify.  And yet Caithness Horizons gives no impression of having had to cut its cloth to limited budgets.  Throughout the building the finish is of a high standard.  Interactive technology is used pervasively but sensibly, to enhance, not distract from, an array of very fine objects and artefacts.  The interpretation  panels are perhaps wordier than convention would recommend, but they’re very readable and strike a good balance between accessibility and depth of knowledge.  It has an air of confidence and authority, but not condescension.  Much as I am interested in the past, I can nonetheless quickly become bored by some museums.  Not here.

Caithness and Thurso fully deserve a facility of this ambition and quality, and I mean absolutely no criticism of Caithness Horizons when I say that, by so raising the bar, it sets a very considerable challenge for the many other museums and visitor centres dotted along the A9 corridor between Inverness and Thurso and Wick.

It’s not just the scale and quality of Caithness Horizons that offer such a tangible challenge.  It’s the space—space for a cafe, a sizeable shop, a fine temporary exhibition area that housed, on our visit, a highly entertaining display on art and surfing (yes, I mean surfing), for a classroom/workspace and an audio-visual theatre.  And it’s the opening times: 10.00-20.00 Monday to Saturday , and 11.00-16.00 on Sundays.  That’s an appropriate response to the needs of visitors, but few volunteer-run facilities could match those hours.  And entry to Caithness Horizons is free. Most of its smaller rivals depend on their income from admissions.

One of the things that Caithness Horizons does really well is to point the visitor who wants to learn more to the hundreds of sites round Caithness that they might choose to visit, whether they are local or passing through.  That is a major achievement, and one not yet common enough in such centres.  I see no evidence whatsoever that Caithness Horizons is seeking to compete with its fellow museums—quite the reverse.  And yet, by its very existence it cannot help casting a bright, and sometimes unflattering, light, on some of those other, less well endowed, local centres. 

So much energy, heat, and debate have been expended, in the last couple of years, on the plans for Creative Scotland, and their impact on the arts and the creative industries.  But where, especially in this Year of Homecoming, is the comparable debate on the heritage sector? Your average local heritage body still has to deal with a plethora of government agencies, from Museums and Galleries Scotland to the Council for Scottish Archaeology, from Historic Scotland to the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.  And, even more than the arts, the heritage sector, especially in the Highlands and Islands, is hugely dependent on massive volunteer effort.  In most cases, an aging volunteer effort.

Museums and heritage sites have already started to close, or limit their opening hours—at least, some of those in the care of NTS have done so. Ironically, the current economic downturn may be an advantage to some museums, if it means more visitors coming to the Highlands, and hence more paid admissions. But many are facing a difficult future. That’s not an argument against creating new quality facilities like Caithness Horizons. But it is an argument for a concerted effort to support the heritage sector as a whole.  HI~Arts had the pleasure of being part of the recent Skills Building for the Future Programme, a partnership between Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the six Local Authorities in the HIE area.  That programme was itself part of a national scheme, the Regional Development Challenge Fund, set up by the Scottish Government and delivered through Museums and Galleries Scotland.

SBFF delivered an immense programme of practical training to small and voluntary heritage groups throughout the Highlands and Islands.  It was hugely successful, very cost effective, and a model of agency partnership. But it was also time limited, and it so far has no successor. Maybe once the dust has settled from the current stramash over Creative Scotland, we can all turn our attention to the daunting challenges facing the heritage sector.