A small town in Aberdeenshire has become one of the most unlikely arts centres in the UK.
Huntly's buildings, shops and public spaces have become gallery walls for more than 50 unusual works of art.
The town also has its own logo and a song composed by Mike Scott of The Waterboys.
The happenings – which have included residents cycling en masse trailing chalk, performing in choirs, photographing themselves, and measuring their Scottishness – are the work of Deveron Arts, led by Claudia Zeiske.
And the project's artist in residence, Ethiopian Mihret Kebede, 37, has even convinced Ethiopian runner Haile Gebrselassie, the winner of two Olympic gold medals for the 10,000m, to take part.
Slow Marathon is inspired by the 5850 miles between Ms Kebede's home in Addis Ababa and Huntly.
She will accumulate the distance by asking 225 people to each traverse the marathon distance of 26 miles in Scotland and Ethiopia – and one of them is Gebrselassie himself, who will also donate his shoe laces, a material often used in the artist's work.
All the other participants will exchange shoe laces.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article