As the project based around the schoolhouse on the shores of Loch Croispol continues many activities have taken palace involving volunteers and specialists. The ongoing research has asked many further questions but a fuller picture of the historical environment is emerging. The story goes further than a school without pupils!

 

In progress is video production of the project with workshops in using and editing material form camcorders. Permission has been sought and granted from the main funders, the Heritage Lottery, to produce a downloadable audio trail application replacing the need to have several interpretation panels on the trail around the headland. A single panel will be installed at the old school describing the archaeology and finds highlighting the ancient crert arrowhead. Biologist Andy Summers and his ecologist wife Ros have offered walks and talks of the ecology past and present and in effort to establish life and times in what went before Craft History and Storytelling with Arthur Deuart and the celebrated Essie Stewart have led events in the old tradition for the passage of information. Nicola Pool and Ruth MacDougal have held studio opportunities to produce artist impressions illustrating the period of the school. The research has produced information reaching much further back in time and a picture of the area over millennia is beginning to emerge. From when hunter gathers found rich ways and the flora and fauna were quite different and the area as has been described “the rain forest of the North” This gives the find of a Neolithic arrowhead during the archaeological phase earlier in the year a better understanding.

 

This project, which has been operating for the last two years, has brought together specialists from several disciplines all with the common interest of understanding the heritage of an area that has some quite unique aspects. From the arts, including the well known poet George Gunn who has Durness connections, and writers to the sciences.

 

Along with several training opportunities for volunteers and others involved in the project a permanent moveable exhibition to carry the results around the North West Highlands is underway. The project is scheduled to run to December 2010 and the organisers stress that it is never too late to become involved.