The tales, traditions and history of the Highlands and Islands will be on the "world's stage" thanks to a unique project.
Six museums from across the Highlands and Islands have been chosen to take part in a first-of-its-kind initiative which will allow them to showcase their incredible collections to visitors as far afield as the United States, where up to 8% claim they are of Scottish descent.
Inverness Museum and Art Gallery; Gairloch Museum; Highlanders’ Museum; Cromarty Courthouse Museum; Clyne Heritage Society (Brora Heritage Centre), and Stromness Museum, Orkney will be guided to create digitised version of their exhibitions
Arts and culture leaders say the initiative will help Scottish museums to expand their global reach, helping bring the storied history of the Highlands and Islands to a wider audience.
The project is a collaboration between XpoNorth Digital and the world’s most downloaded museum app, Smartify, which has around three million users worldwide.
The app will allow smartphone users from all over the world to view exhibitions, a multi-media tour and even an e-shop.
READ MORE: The mudlarks helping to preserve Scotland's history
Gairloch Museum focuses on the north-west area of the region and includes a replica croft house and archives focussing on the involvement of local residents in World War I.
Meanwhile, the Highlanders’ Museum at Fort George will be featuring artefacts and documents relating to the Highland military and the Cromarty Courthouse Museum will recount the harsh judicial processes that took place within the seaport’s eighteenth-century courthouse.
Brora’s industrial past will be shared through the contributions of its Heritage Centre, while, moving further north still, Stromness Museum will showcase the Orkney archipelago’s extraordinary history, dating back to the Neolithic period and beyond.
Lorna Cruickshank, Curatorial Manager at the Inverness Museum and Art Gallery said: “High Life Highland’s Inverness Museum & Art Gallery (IMAG) is delighted to have the opportunity to take part in the programme, as it will help our charity to extend the accessibility of our museum collections.
"Smartify will support the museum to meet the needs and expectations of an ever-changing audience; local people, international visitors, and those with access needs.
READ MORE: Distillery to open its doors for the first time in 125 years
"The museum looks forward to working with the Smartify team to re-charge the museum’s interpretation and enable new and fresh stories to be told”.
Janette Parker, Curator at Stromness Museum, added: “The Trustees and staff at Stromness Museum are delighted that we have been chosen to benefit from the opportunity to work with XpoNorth Digital and Smartify on this project.
"This will enable us to raise our profile and attract more visitors to share our amazing collections with”.
Freya Samuel has been appointed to guide the museums through the process of digitising their content.
Nicola Henderson, Digital Heritage Specialist at XpoNorth Digital, said "With over three million users worldwide, Smartify offers a fantastic platform for connecting regional, national, and international audiences with the long and impressive biography of the Scottish Highlands and Islands”.
Smartify is available on iOS and Android from the App Store and Google Play and the web via app.smartify.org.
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel