About

In July 2011 Cape Farewell embarked on a month-long expedition by boat across the Scottish Islands, bringing the notion and experience of expedition home to the UK, with an exploration of island ecologies and cultures, and of the strategies for sustainable and resilient futures being implemented across the Scottish Isles. More ›

The Crew

The expedition crew of 40 includes island artists, storytellers, film makers, playwrights, architects, designers, musicians, community leaders, social scientists, ecologists, marine biologists, oceanographers, poets, acclaimed Gaelic singers and a chef.
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Video highlights

Watch video highlights from the expedition ›

Mingulay, Barra, Vatersay

Mingulay

Walking with Skye artist Julie Brook up the high, spongy, wildflower-thick hills behind the bothy on Mingulay: sand drift filling ruined houses of the abandoned village by the bay. Mingulay was emptied of its inhabitants over 80 years ago, but never subject to the violence and grief of the Clearances. On a clear day at least, it has a great and breathing peace about it. Behind the bay, the hills rise steeply to a grassy edge, and then fall heart-stoppingly away, 800 feet straight down into the Atlantic. From the cleft of blue-black mossy rock the thick stench of guano rises up with the salt: thousands of puffins, guillemots, sheerwaters, skuas and terns wheel and cry in a revolving column on air currents above the sea surge. Breathtaking and barely imaginable, this deep vertical world of birds.

Barra

On Barra, we join a ceilidh in the community hall and among cups of tea and home-baked cakes present and exchange gifts: Stephen and Anne talk about their work, Jo describes her involvement in designing, building and sailing the Plastiki, and young Barra poet Jamie McIntosh reads out a passionate condemnation of corporate corruption [Earth Rise and Corporate Corruption [PDF]]. There’s Highland dancing, and a wonderful, exuberant, rhythmic session of waulking songs by Ceal na Nighean; the women swaying and pounding the tweed as they sing in a mesmerising choreography of hands, craft, labour, story, friendship. Local councillor Donald Manford graciously and generously weaves the evening together, holding in one space the fierce independence of the community and our shared desire to connect, communicate, and draw knowledge and a sense of direction from one another’s stories and experience.

Vatersay

Huddled in the bay in light rain and low mist by a white sand beach and marron grass dunes. The shore’s littered with crab claws, sea urchins, razor clams. Vatersay is connected to Barra by a causeway, but is a world away on an afternoon like this, in the wet stillness with fishing boats purring by loaded with creels. Just over the dunes, beyond the quiet, the Atlantic rolls onto long white beaches strewn with seaweed and the sand gives way to machair thick with bees and harebells. A monument to 350 passengers drowned in the late 19th century on their way from Liverpool to Canada, buried here under the moving dunes. A child on a bicycle, peddling furiously down an empty street by still grey houses with upturned boats in gardens. Out here in the Western Isles, between Europe and America, the sea is everywhere and everything on land relates to it. When we stood in the community hall last night, we all rocked gently, looking for the horizon.

Author: Ruth Little

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Joins the expedition for week 1, 2 and 3 Ruth Little is Associate Director at Cape Farewell. She is an Australian dramaturg, teacher, writer and former academic who lives and works in London, where she is Literary Manager of the Royal Court Theatre. Much of her work with writers and theatre artists explores the territory at the edge of chaos, and the dynamic relationship between order and disorder.
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Sea Change Programme

Puffin from the Bird Yarns project, part of Cape Farewell's Sea Change programme.
Grown out of the Scottish Islands Expedition, Cape Farewell’s Sea Change is a four-year programme of research and making across Scotland’s western and northern isles. Sea Change involves over 30 UK and international artists and scientists, working collaboratively and independently to consider the relationships between people, places and resources in the context of climate change.... Read more ›

A timely reminder of how valuable an outsider’s perspective can be

Community Energy Scotland’s annual conference offered a timely reminder of how valuable an outsider’s perspective can be.  It was reported on some research into how different countries are taking forward the development of renewable energy. The study looks at several European countries including Scotland, as well as five states in America. The most striking feature... Read more ›

First there was an island – then there was a boat

Shiants 2
“First there was an island – then there was a boat”, so begins a poem by Shetland writer Laureen Johnston.  Since owning my first boat at the age of eleven, I have been an obsessive explorer of islands, the smaller and more remote the better.  Once, in the grip of a sudden attack of aquatic... Read more ›

‘On these isles’

Lawrence has a 7am coffee break after feeding cattle.
‘On these isles’ is a project by photographer Ed Smith, whom we had the great pleasure of meeting when visiting the Island of Eigg. Ed has spent large periods of time on Eigg and other Inner Hebridean isles capturing life there in pictures. Have a look at more of his images and this project at... Read more ›

A gaelic song

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Mary Jane Lamond, Jo Royle and Julie Fowlis Video by Ruth Little

Cape Farewell – we know what to do, can art help us get on and do it?

The following is an excerpt from Sara Parkin’s article found on the Forum for the Future website. …I was fortunate enough to join the crew for one week of a four week tour of Scottish Islands, starting with Skye and Canna before crossing the Minch to Mingulay, Barra and South Uist. The weather was kind,... Read more ›

Islands and Visions

Eigg Barbecue on Song of the Whale
There is a sea view when travelling from Eigg to Mallaig where you have a 360° vision of the Small Isles, Skye, the mountains of Scotland, Mull and, far into the distance, the Outer Hebrides. At 6 am yesterday the grey of the sea bled into the numerous blues of the mountains all dramatised by... Read more ›

Annie Cattrell and Jo Shapcott in conversation about week 4 of the expedition

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JS Annie, what is it about islands? AC I like the fact that there’s a larger proportion of sea than land mass visible. There appears to be a completeness and self-sufficiency about the individual islands even though they are all distinctly different. There seems to be a big distinction between uninhabited and inhabited islands –... Read more ›

Spume

Photo by Sion Parkinson
(1) On the crossing from Ullapool to Stornaway on the Calmac, I wrote myself a list of rules, a set of behaviours that would concentrate my efforts, or assuage any guilt from any feelings of impotence, in my seven days aboard the ship. (1.1) Rules: (1.1.1) Take photographs, more than you need to, get in... Read more ›

Shelter

Cotton Grass marking  Dwelling Rona
It was my birthday when I went to Rònaidh first. A place I wanted to see since I was little but I had always missed the boat. It is about forty miles north of my house near the Butt of Lewis. I went on the sixth of August aged thirty eight on the yacht ‘Song... Read more ›

Mary Arnold-Forster

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Skye architect Mary shows the house of Fred Taylor she designed and reflects on the progress on Eigg and other green based aspirations for the islands architecture and energy supply.   Video shot by David Buckland     Sketches by Mary Arnold-Forster

Farewell and Ahoy: Log of a Voyage

Photo by Mary Smith
“Back in the kitchen.  A new group has joined Song of the Whale. There is an overlap of crew, Cape Farewell folk, and the artists and scientists who will sail together this coming week. They are planning to sail to North Rona, the Shiants and the coasts of Skye. But I’ve left the ship though... Read more ›