Creativity, colour, craziness…fun!

by Inverness Old Town Art, 21 Feb 2010

Growing up in Inverness, I’m fairly sure these were not words I would have used to describe my hometown. Maybe it was just the compulsory apathy of adolescence, the fact that it wasn’t cool to actually like where you’re from, but moving back four years later, there is a definite sense of something here that didn’t used to be. The Highlands is a place where people come to be outdoors, to climb the hills and take a gulp of pure air, but it seems that now there may be other ways to blow away the cobwebs. Philosophy sessions, public tea parties, wool wrapped monuments…something small but fundamental is taking place here…and it’s changing the character of old ‘Sneck in ways that many of us could at one time have only hoped for.

It only makes sense really. The Highlands has some of the most inspiring landscapes in the world. Wild and untethered, this is a place where imaginations have the space to run free. Ours is a land laid bare – honest and elemental, here you can watch the colours changing over the hills and reflected in the lochs, can see the weather coming over the wide open spaces, can feel your mood being directly affected by the quality of the light. It has both drama and subtlety, stunning visuals and a full palette of emotions that trigger a primeval human urge for creativity. It’s an artist’s dream, and there’s no reason why the concrete corners of the city can’t be as much a wonderland as the wilderness.

And maybe this is exactly why a bunch of like-minded folk gathered on the 8th floor of a multi-storey car park one freezing December evening to lend support to Inverness’s latest creative enterprise. The ‘Getting Up’ project, organized by Inverness Old Town Art and using the talent of artists and project pros from all over Scotland, has taken the town’s empty shop windows and, as with its previous projects, turned them into something vibrant, quirky and positive. As one of the main venues for the event, the ex Video Drive-In was transformed from static vacancy to a hubbub of colour and creavity. Mike Inglis’ ‘Garden of Eden’ display turned many heads with its futuristic rendition of ‘The Fall’ whilst Hilary Grant and Mahala Le May’s glowing naturalistic shapes added some enchantment to the window sill. Inflatable Monster dusted off some old archival footage of Inverness, projected it for all to see once again and put a funky twist on some interesting characters that can still be seen on the walls of the Rose Street car park. Round the corner, Janie Nicoll jazzed up the old Harry Gow with some clever text work and the multi-storey became the home of Yuck ‘n’ Yum’s ‘Turn Your Blu Tooth On’ techno-art. The spirit of this project is the idea of considering these spaces not as urban blips or sad reminders of a past that will never return but instead as blank canvases ready to be used in forward thinking and provocative ways.

Despite the odd icicle clinking under the nostrils there was a determined sense of fun and camaraderie that night as we watched musicians in alcoves, wandered the streets to admire the artwork, sipped at a hot brew and waited expectantly outside the ‘9p Op’ for our weird and wonderful tombola prizes from the fabulous NOWNOW girls before going for a well earned tipple. One good ol’ knees up later, complete with impassioned sing song and banjo rendition of Buckley’s ‘Hallelujah’ and we were a room full of happy folk…

Now on my errands in town, every time I see a flash of colour on a building wall or the line of a poem engraved in stone, I think of the possibilities and am reminded that there is a very important undercurrent of inventiveness in need of greater exposure, an underlying buzz that just needs to be more keenly tapped in to, harnessed and celebrated. We just need to be encouraged to come out of our shells a bit, to know it’s ok to let out our inner nutter. We need to make terms like yarn-bombing part of our vocab and as much a part of the scenery as the bens and glens. We need a certain degree of beautiful madness in order to fully express ourselves, to fully exist – just look how it brings us together… Hallelujah indeed.