‘Poetic storytelling and the context of cultural resilience’: Ray and Kathryn present at Film-Poetry Scotland and Brittany Conference.

At the Hands across the Sea Conference held at An Lanntair in Stornoway (24-25th March 2022) Ray and Kathryn presented their paper “‘Play Me Something’: poetic storytelling and the context of cultural resilience”. This paper offered an exploration from a ‘longer-view’ in regard of subalternity and tensions over both Scottish Gaelic and Breton cultural resilience, minority language and culture expression, as well as salient issues of island identity and place, through the lens of Tim Neat and John Berger’s award-winning film Play Me Something (1989).

“On the small, Gaelic island of Barra, the island’s issues of subalternity and resilience are related in the context of the distant island-city of Venice by a mesmerising storyteller. The latter’s poetic powers simultaneously summons the parallel island voices of tradition and modernity while the Gramscian dimension of his tale implicitly offers an analytical framework with which the creative artist can nurture an innovative approach to cultural resilience and resistance.”

Burnett and Burnett, 2022

For details on the conference: “Film-Poetry, Hybridity and Cultural Resilience in the Scottish Highlands & Islands and Western Brittany” 24-25th March 2022, An Lanntair, Stornoway, Lewis. Organised by the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) and the University of Western Brittany (UBO/HCTI). Organisers: Lindsay Blair (UHI) & Camille Manfredi (UBO/HCTI).

Burnett and Burnett Play Me Something: poetic storytelling and the context of cultural resilience Title SlideMarch 2022

Play Me Something: poetic storytelling and the context of cultural resilience

Ray Burnett, Kathryn Burnett, Scottish Centre for Island Studies, University of the West of Scotland

As in the present 2014 referendum era, so in the earlier pivotal 1979 referendum period, there was a similar identifiable output of creative activity over the ‘national question’ – a struggle over identity and place. A notable feature of the latter was its intermediality, in particular the output of dramatists (John McGrath, 7:84 Scotland) and film-makers (Douglas Eadie, Mike Alexander, Tim Neat) with poets, singers, musicians, tradition-bearers and collectors (Hamish Henderson, Sorley MacLean, Margaret Bennett).

Of particular significance on this salient was the extensive filmic work of Douglas Eadie, Mike Alexander and Tim Neat and their engagement with the poetry, song, music and tradition of Scotland’s Scots and Gaelic communities – a common cause engagement that extended to the minority cultural output of Brittany (Tri Yann, Gilles Servat, Youenn Gwernig Alan Stivell, Claudine Mazéas).

It was progressive artistic work based on a recognition that the promotion of minority languages, cultures and traditions has an inherently political dimension: an alignment in a wider war of position over the contested terrain of land and language that acknowledged a tension between the limiting specifics of grounded community cultural referrals and a necessary engagement beyond, on a wider societal and political field.

This paper explores this tension over cultural resilience through the lens of an award-winning film from this earlier era – Tim Neat and John Berger’s Play Me Something (1989). On the small, Gaelic island of Barra, the island’s issues of subalternity and resilience are related in the context of the distant island-city of Venice by a mesmerising storyteller. The latter’s poetic powers simultaneously summons the parallel island voices of tradition and modernity while the Gramscian dimension of his tale implicitly offers an analytical framework with which the creative artist can nurture an innovative approach to cultural resilience and resistance.

Mr Ray Burnett, Scottish Centre for Island Studies, is a writer and researcher on transnational dimensions of Scotland’s cultural and social history, with particular regard to the highlands and islands, and long-standing engagement with the issues of a subaltern Scotland. (burnett.ray@gmailcom)

Dr Kathryn A. Burnett, Scottish Centre for Island Studies, Senior Lecturer, University of the West of Scotland teaches inter-disciplinary Masters programmes in Creative Arts Practice and Media. Research includes representation of remote and island spaces; Scottish cultural heritage contexts for applied creative practice incl. archives, cultural place narratives, visuality of rurality and its mediatization. (kathryn.burnett@uws.ac.uk)

https://handsacrosstheseacom.wordpress.com/conference-march-2022/

Universal Basic Income: Mike Danson delivers ‘webinar’ talk to Green European Foundation event

Mike Danson speaks on the value of and shared learning from universal basic income models and lessons of UBI at Green European Foundation event (November 2nd 2021)

“More and more pilot programs are being developed to test the idea of Universal Basic around the world. What have been the results and what lessons can we learn from them?“

This event was organised by the Green European Foundation with the support of Transición Verde and with the financial support of the European Parliament to the Green European Foundation. (The European Parliament is not responsible for the content of this event).

For more details on this webinar event and related UBI Project focus see here:

https://gef.eu/event/pilot-projects-on-ubi/

Mike Danson : Professor Mike Danson is an economist, Professor Emeritus of Enterprise Policy, Heriot-Watt University, Visiting Professor in Energy Policy, University of Strathclyde, and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He has published widely on rural, regional and island economies, microbreweries, minority languages, and many other areas of Scottish economic policy and social development. Chair of Basic Income Network Scotland, Chair of the 2021 BIEN (Basic Income Earth Network) world congress, depute Convenor Jimmy Reid Foundation, Trustee of Nordic Horizons and Community Renewal, Mike was on the Scottish Government’s Just Transition Commission and has advised, national and international organisations: OECD, WHO, EC, trades unions and community groups. Mike is Co-Director of the Scottish Centre for Island Studies. Contact: michael.danson@hw.ac.uk.

For more information on UBI research and policy focus in Scotland see:

https://www.ubilabnetwork.org/basic-income-in-the-news/peace-of-mind-exploring-universal-basic-incomes-potential-to-improve-mental-health

“Whichever way I look I see a clouded horizon”: Compton Mackenzie SCIS Research Paper at MeCCSA 2019

MECCSA 2019, University of Stirling

 

Kathryn A. Burnett, University of the West of Scotland and Ray Burnett, Scottish Centre for Island Studies

“Whichever way I look I see a clouded horizon” wrote Mackenzie once of his uneasy relationship with the island of Herm, in the English Channel.  D.H. Lawrence’s tale (pub.1928) of the “the man who loved  islands” is reputed to be greatly informed by the complex affections and affectations of  – amongst many descriptors – writer, broadcaster, activist, and resolute islophile Compton Mackenzie.  The “topos of the island explores and creates bridges between the real and the imaginary” state Stephanides and Bassett (2008) but crucially also between “genres and disciplines ”. This paper deploys a retrospective lens through the post-war iconography of Whisky Galore (1949 Dir., Mackendrick), offering a pivoting multi-disciplinary perspective of Mackenzie ’s time in the Hebrides, as well as  his “island time” spent elsewhere. With reference to Mackenzie’s own memoirs – not least  of his time among the “aristocrats of democracy” – and his considerable published works, as well as media accounts and broadcast archive, off-shore socio-political questions will be asked of onshore cultural policy, and of continuing  dialogues of ‘remoteness’, ‘islandness’, independence and nationhood today.

 

Islandness: Identity and Independence Panel MECCSA 2019

MECCSA 2019 (Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association) Annual Conference, University of Stirling

Islandness: Identity and Independence Panel proposer: Dr Kathryn A Burnett, University of the West of Scotland;  Contributors Mr Tony Grace,  Mr Ray Burnett and Dr Kathryn A. Burnett; Chair: Dr Sarah Neely, University of Stirling.

This Scottish Centre for Island Studies panel contribution is offered in close reflection of the 40^th anniversary of MacDiarmid’s death in 1978, and the 90^th anniversary of the formation of the National Party of Scotland, which involved both MacDiarmid and Mackenzie. 2019 itself is the 50^th anniversary of the release of the iconic island film ‘Whisky Galore’ based on Compton Mackenzie’s celebrated novel. This film continues to offer a set of island tropes that signify both Scottishness and Britishness as well as the ‘national antisyzgies’ of cultural authenticities, the islandness complicities of place and people and the mediated complexities of remoteness, connectedness and independences. A further thematic of ‘island and national liberty’ draws on archival records and new film practice celebrating the ‘father of biography’ James Boswell, and his celebrated accounts of ‘tours’ including the Hebrides (1773) with Johnson, as well as his earlier account of Corsica and most particularly its independence movement.

We are delighted to be working in partnership with The Boswell Trust and hope to revisit aspects of this themed panel later in the year as part of the Boswell Trust’s event and celebrations diary 2019.

Rural Enterprise SCIS Round Table

See  information below on the SCIS round table session  that was held on island and remote rural enterprise at Rural Enterprise conference at UWS Dumfries in June 2013.

“Britain: The Fractured Island” by Ray Burnett

“Britain: The Fractured Island” (pp 228-245) by Ray Burnett  is included in The Political Economy of Divided Islands (2013) edited by Godfrey Baldacchino and published by Palgrave Macmillan as part of the  International Political Economy series.

“Despite the sonorous magnificence of Shakespeare’s John of Gaunt monologue, England is not an island. Rather this ‘England, that was wont to conquer others’ just thinks, acts, governs, talks, plays and presents itself as if it is. For the island polity known as ‘Britain’, more formally as ‘Great Britain (GB)’, the ‘United Kingdom (UK)’ is an odd place. In spite of its self-promotion as the ostensible product of a long, stable and immutable partnership of equals, the ‘national’ institutions of this state-nation consistently present themselves as those of a singular ‘nation-state’ through the monofocal prism of the dominant ‘island race’ of England: the English historical narrative of ‘this sceptred isle’, and a smothering blanket of English cultural referents.”

DOI: 10.1057/9781137023131_13

Full details of the edited collection to purchase are here:

Godfrey Baldacchino (ed.) (2013) The Political Economy of Divided Islands:
Unified Geographies, Multiple Polities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 256
pp., £63 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-137-02312-4.

http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137023124#aboutAuthors

 A review of the book can be found here: Carabelli, G. (2015) [Review of the book The Political Economy of Divided Islands: Unified Geographies,
Multiple Polities], Urban Island Studies, 1, 187-189.

Regional Development in Northern Europe Peripherality, Marginality and Border Issues

Regional Development in Northern Europe Peripherality, Marginality and Border Issues

“This book draws on work from across northern Europe and is parallel and complementary to the network itself. By establishing an intellectual and practically orientated framework and platform, and by bringing together contributions defining the state-of-the-art and potential development paths in the field, it is the first volume to offer a systematic and scientific view from the periphery.”

This collection edited by Professor Mike Danson and Professor Peter de Souza  brings together contributions from key experts in regional development, sustainability, economics and enterprise. The content detailed below each offer insight to the ideas and practice relating to defining and articulating regional ‘margins’, ‘borders’ and ‘peripherality’ concerns in Europe today:

Part One: Overview

1. Introduction: Peripherality and Marginality Mike Danson and Peter de Souza

Part Two: Theoeretical Underpinnings

2. The Development of the Periphery in the Experience Economy Anne Lorentzen

3. Regionalism and Marginalisation Tassilo Herrschel

4. Re-thinking ‘Peripherality’ in a Knowledge-intensive Service-dominated Economy Mike Crone

5. On the conceptual development of margins and marginalisation Stephen Syrett

6. Dynamics of Peripherality Klaus Lindegaard

Part Three: Peripheries and Margins

7. Can Peripheral Regions Innovate? Sara Davies, Rona Michie and Heidi Vironen

8. Proximity and Distributed Innovations Tom Johnstad och Svein Bergum

9. Commercial Counter-urbanisation and the Rural Economy Gary Bosworth

10. Entrepreneurship in the Periphery: Geography and Resources Nikolina Fuduric

11. Transcending Orthodoxy: Multi-house Homes Tor Arnesen

12. Economic and Enterprise Development in Community Buy-outs George Callaghan, Mike Danson and Geoff Whittam

13. Survival on the Farm Tor Arnesen and Erik Mönnes at Rena

14. Gendered Spaces on Trial Gro Marit Grimsrud

15. Who has the last laugh? – further developments on the entrepreneurial politician as an unconventional problem solver Meeri Brandum Granqvist

Part Four: Borders and Conclusion 

16. Concluding comments and connections with the border theme Peter de Souza and Mike Danson

 

 

 

Seminar Series: Whose Economy?

Professor Mike Danson of the University of West of Scotland and Oxfam’s UK Poverty Programme host a seminar series in Scotland under the theme: Whose Economy? This series was held over autumn and winter 2010 and 2011 in Edinburgh, Inverness, Glasgow and Stirling.

Further details at http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get_involved/Flyer_updated_10_January_2011.pdf

“The Whose Economy? seminar series brings together experts to examine key developments that have influenced the livelihoods of
communities in Scotland and, from the perspective of vulnerable communities, explore the implications of structural changes in the Scottish economy. The focus of the series is a questioning of what economy is being created in Scotland and, specifically, for whom? Persistent poverty exists in Scotland alongside high economic prosperity, leading to gross disparities in income and wealth, and life chances and lifestyles. Poverty and inequalities have historical and structural roots: changes in the Scottish economy in recent decades have seen a shift from manufacturing to a service-led, supposedly ‘knowledge economy’. Glasgow, for example, was once the second city of the British Empire – now it is Britain’s second biggest shopping destination. The economy that is being pursued is not only one-dimensional (in its apparent obsession with retailed growth), but ultimately premised on an inherent contradiction. Trust, relationships and reciprocity are undermined by hyper-consumerism, status-driven consumption and individual instant gratification through material acquisition, themselves driven by inequalities. Individuals are implicitly expected to function as just-in-time inventory – on demand when the needs of businesses require, but disposable when deemed superfluous to production or service demands.

Speakers will discuss the relevant actors and how the interaction of the pursuit of economic growth and other policy trends (such as welfare reform) has impacted on communities across Scotland.”

‘The Furthest Hebrides’: Critical reach from contested shores: Kathryn Burnett and Ray Burnett deliver to IGU 2010 Conference, island of Ven, Sweden

Finding Their Place: Islands in Social Theory

The Island of Ven, Sweden, 27–30 August, 2010

ABSTRACTS PARALLEL PAPER SESSION B1: Identity, culture, tradition and knowledge

 

 

 ‘The Furthest Hebrides’ : Critical reach from contested shores

Kathryn A Burnett & Ray Burnett

University of the West of Scotland, UK

 

Scotland’s islands are paradoxically peripheral yet conceptually central to an

understanding of the layered complexity of issues relating to land and identity in

contemporary 21 st  century Scotland. Through a specific focus on Scotland’s

western isles, this paper traces the authoring of the layered constructions and

reconstructions of space and place that has produced a dense and variegated

palimpsest; the process of the ‘making’ of the Hebrides. It examines visual and

documentary representations to draw out some of the issues of ‘belonging’ and

ownership, appropriation and dissemination, in the context of the nationalidentitarian

functions of culture, that are embedded in the complimentary and

contradictory ‘ways of seeing’ the contested terrain of island cultural landscape(s).

Through a grounded multi-disciplinary approach to the issues raised and the

exemplars elaborated on, the paper opens up several overlapping and inter-related

issues of concentric and conflicting identities, delineation of the field of cultural

discourse, the inscription of meaning and value and the production of cultural

landscapes, and the deeper processes of complicity, self colonialism and

subalternity.

The paper concludes by advocating that a detailed study of how these processes

of ‘making’ are mediated at local (island), national (Scottish) and supra-national

(UK) level opens up new channels for further research in the intricate waters of

the cultural dynamics of authorship, ownership, ‘belonging’ and power in the

politics of land and identity.

SCIS Paper on Compton MacKenzie delivered to SICRI conference 2010

SCIRI 2010 ART AND ISLANDS ISLOMANIA CONFERENCE

A co-authored paper (Ray Burnett and Kathryn A Burnett) was delivered by Ray Burnett on behalf of SCIS to the SICRI 2010 ART AND ISLANDS ISLOMANIA CONFERENCE  conference in Guernsey. The paper –  “Portaying the Hebrides: the irresistible lure and the irredeemable legacy” – offers a critical examination of the life and work of Compton Mackenzie in relation to the wider representation of islands.  The abstract for the paper is available below.  A version of this paper was delivered to the June 18th 2010 SCIS Research Meeting and Seminar, UWS. Thanks to colleagues for their comments.

Abstract
From the 18th century to the present, the islands that lie off the western seaboard of Scotland, collectively known as the Hebrides, have been one of the foremost island groups in Europe to attract the attention of artists and to acquire a substantial volume of cultural representations of their landscape, environment, people and communities, in literature, music, song, the visual arts, photography and film. Restricting itself to artistic representations in literature and film this paper examines the formulation and the legacy of two recurring and influential tropes of cultural representation of these islands ─ the ‘Hebridean Other’ and ‘Solitude and Desertion’.

The literary prism for this close focus study is provided by the life and work of Compton Mackenzie, the islomanic inspiration for D. H. Lawrence’s short story, ‘The Man Who Loved Islands’. MacKenzie’s lifelong attraction to islands involved successive periodic residency on acquired island properties from Capri in Italy, to Herm and Jethou in the Channel Islands and the Shiants and Barra in the Hebrides. The screen adaptations of MacKenzie’s Hebridean novels and the acclaimed Hebridean classics of the Michael Powell / Emeric Pressberger partnership provide the filmic prism.

The paper discusses the twin tropes of the ‘Hebridean Other’ and ‘Solitude and Desertion’ with specific reference to key iconic cultural representations, the novel/film adaptation Whisky Galore! (1947/1949 and the films The Edge of the World (1937) and I Know Where I’m Going (1945). It reflects on the enduring consequences of this cultural legacy for the island locations and communities with which they are associated, Barra, Eriskay, St Kilda, Mull and its adjacent isles in relation to the cultural referential framework they created. And it concludes by tracing the far-reaching and continuing reverberations in relation to ongoing issues relating to the cultural and symbolic capital of the islands.