During 2024-25, Lyth Arts Centre’s Covid-19 memorial project evolved into TOLL, a significant, multi-site creative programme responding to the collective impact of the pandemic across the Highlands. What began as an open and exploratory process developed into a distinctive, artist-led memorial combining sound, film, live events and community participation, creating space for reflection, remembrance and connection.
Developed with artists Sinéad Hargan, Cat Meighan and Hector MacInnes, TOLL grew in scale and ambition to reflect the breadth of experiences shared by communities. Central to the project was the creation of an archive of short statements describing how people across the Highlands experienced the pandemic. Each statement was inscribed onto a traditional handbell, forming a living archive of thirty bells.
In June 2024 the bells travelled through the Highlands, carried and rung by citizens, primary school children, mountaineers, befrienders and many others.
The project culminated in the premiere of a film and documentary, and a series of public celebration and remembrance events held in Wick, Fort William and Inverness. These events brought together participants, partners and wider audiences, offering moments of collective pause as well as opportunities for shared experience, conversation and acknowledgement of loss and resilience.
Toll the film is now available to view on our Vimeo, along with Toll: A Radical Archive, a short documentary about the making of the Toll project.
Links to both films below.
If you would like downloadable versions for a community or public screening, please get in touch with calvin@lytharts.org.uk
The bells now form a dispersed, living memorial across the Highlands. Each hand-made bell carries words gathered from communities during the project and was taken on walks, processions and journeys through places of shared significance in June 2024. Following these events, the bells were entrusted to the care of the communities and organisations who helped shape them, remaining close to the people, landscapes and stories they represent.
Today, the bells are held across the Highlands with local custodians and may be rung, shared or brought together again for future moments of remembrance, exhibitions or community gatherings.
More information on the route taken, people involved and the final homes of the bells below..
Lyth – Lairg – The Crask Inn – Forsinard Flows – Halkirk – Wick Harbour – Badbea Clearance Village – The Doll – Fortrose – Cromarty – Nigg Ferry – Strathpeffer – Knockfarrel – Invergordon – Inverness – Culloden – Aviemore – Loch Morlich – Fort William – Caol – Corran Ferry – Kilchoan – Castle Tioram – Mallaig – Morar Sands – Armadale Ferry – Ellishader – Kilmuir – Portree – Lochcarron – Torridon – Gairloch – Allt Beithe – Dundonnell River – Ullapool – Stac Pollaidh – Lochinver – Loch Assynt – Durness – Kyle of Tongue – Castle Varrich – Lyth
‘Hope is everything’
Cromarty Youth Cafe, Victoria Hall, Cromarty
‘Losing trust’
Inverness Museum and Art Gallery collection
‘Being sad being with people being without people’
Within studio space at Room 13, Caol Community Centre, Fort William.
‘I won’t let anything remove my joy’
Norma Davidson, Highland Senior Citizen Network, Strathpeffer.
‘Appreciate key workers’
Lyth Arts Centre, Caithness.
‘The love of families, the gift of carers, the lives lived, remembrance’
Skye & Lochalsh Archive Centre, Portree.
‘Grateful for nature’
Fortrose Library, in Fortrose Academy.
‘Embodied rage’
Remembering Together archive, Pathfoot building, University of Stirling.
‘Joyful rediscovery’
Buried near Loch Ness
‘Who do we protect? Who is protecting us?’
ACCESS group, Highland (location tbc)
‘Guilt for what we couldn’t do’
Care of the artists
‘Connecting through community’
Inverness Museum and Art Gallery collection
‘Hypervigilance’
Care of the artists
‘We were lucky’
Care of the artists
‘A glorious wonderful secret’
Care of the artists
‘We are still here’
Wick Heritage Centre
‘Death death death clap clap clap’
Care of the artists
‘Today I don’t want to be home alone’
Ferrycroft Information and Heritage Centre, Lairg
‘Where is the care?’
Care of the artists
‘Children suffered most’
Heritage Centre Mallaig
‘They told you the route the hearse was going to take’
Inverness Museum and Art Gallery collection.
‘Missed milestones blurred memories’
Invergordon Academy.
‘No matter what days go by’
To be buried
‘No hugs was very rubbish’
(After School Club, North Coast Connections) Kyle Centre, Tongue.
‘Gorrible’
Care of the artists
‘The day I got to hug her I cried’
North Coast Visitor Centre, High Street, Thurso
‘In these times we endure’
Highland Folk Museum, Newtonmore.
‘Laughing through windows’
Seaforth Care Home, Golspie.
‘Peace in acceptance’
Caol Library, Caol Community Centre, Caol, Fortwilliam.
‘Not the place but the people’
Special Needs Action Project (SNAP), Entrance, The Haven Centre, 45 Murray Rd, Smithton, Inverness IV2 7WZ.
LAC would like to thank the Scottish Government and Green Space Scotland for their support, as well as the many partners, participants and communities across the Highlands who entrusted Lyth Arts Centre with this significant and meaningful task. Their collaboration made it possible to realise a memorial that is rooted in place whilst simultaneously resonating beyond a single location.
For more information about how the project developed, please read on below..
“A great bell is not to be silenced. Consider too its simplicity. There is no hidden mechanism. All that it is is plain and open; and if it is moved it must ring.”
Iris Murdoch
Hector rings a bell at Wick Harbour
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Engagement session with Cromarty Youth Cafe
Community Engagement
Sinéad, Cat and Hector have worked with a range of communities and individuals in different settings and locations to supplement the research conducted in phase one, finding the individual, the idiosyncratic, the unrepresentative and the turbulent. They have worked together to create written contributions or statements which will be inscribed on handbells. The contributions will hold and retell the stories, emotions, and responses of the people of the Highlands.
These handbells are currently being fabricated by bell makers Daniel Freyne and David Snoo Wilson from a forge at Ratho, nr Edinburgh. The letters from each inscription will then be individually hand punched into the metal.
Daniel Freyne and David Snoo Wilson
Fabrication of the bells
Groups and individuals will participate in travelling with the bells collectively and individually through various routes on a procession through the Highlands in early June. We are currently working to finalise these routes with each stage being open to the public.
The entire route as a whole will be documented by our filmmaker Mike Webster. Mike is an Award-winning director, camera operator and filmmaker. He has been around the world and back again working on documentaries such as Shooting in the Jungles of the Amazon, The Deserts of Africa, and the Tundra Of Antarctica. When he’s not globe trotting, Mike still lives and works from his home of Inverness.
Mike’s film will be shared in the Autumn and will exist as a legacy of the project alongside the physical bells.
Mike Webster
Finally, these bells will then be held by trusted custodians. Those who may wish to ring them now or in the future, and to keep them for future generations to come and ring.
These custodians will be in the form of community groups, individuals and organisations and will become part of a distributed archive.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
In person and online events for Highland Memory Space Phase #1 will be taking place across the Highlands in June 2023
We have three installations of public online engagement for our Highland Memory Space project
If you might be interested in hosting us for an event, please do get in touch. We welcome contact from specific groups and communities that would identify as having been particularly impacted by the pandemic, or from public facing organisations interested in taking part. Our email address is hmspace@lytharts.org.uk
This project is our Phase 1 creative community consultation. It is led by Highland based artists Hector MacInnes (Isle of Skye), Sinéad Hargan (Caithness) and Cat Meighan (Inverness) and produced by Lyth Arts Centre.
We are engaging with people across the Highlands by exploring our memory of the last three years. We hope you can join us in creating a way for the people of the Highlands to collectively remember, reflect on, heal from, and mark the pandemic. This project is part of the Scottish Government and greenspace Scotland’s ‘Remembering Together’ project.
The creative input from these activities will inform a bank of ideas we create for Phase 2 of the project; the delivery of a memorial project across the Highlands over 2023-2024. This could take many different forms. A book, a picnic, a walking trail, a travelling exhibition or a gathering across the Highlands. That’s for all of us to decide.
We have also created a library of activities focused on our sensory memory of the pandemic. These activities can be done at home, outdoors, in schools or community groups. They are themed around Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste and Touch. Please have a look and send us your creative responses. www.highlandmemory.
Useful Links
It is important to note that this is a space for those who want to begin to process the last three years through the lens of artistic engagement. If you are struggling with grief or isolation, and need help and support, then here are some helplines and groups you can contact:
We work with adults (aged 18 and over) who are lonely and isolated, and live within the Highland Region of Scotland.
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This week marks the three-year anniversary of the very first covid-19 lockdown in the UK. And today we open up the Highland Memory Space website to the public.
Highland Memory Space is an artist-led place for the people of the Highlands to collectively remember, reflect on, heal from, and mark the pandemic.
This is a space for you to take part and share your responses.
There are lots of different creative and sensory activities you can choose from all under the themes of Sight, Sound, Touch, Taste and Smell.
Please have a roam around the website for more info and pick out some activities that suit you. You can send us your responses to hmspace@lytharts.org.uk
We are looking forward to collecting responses and input from communities across the Highland Council Area. These responses will inform what the final commemorative work will be next year. It could be a book, a festival, a touring show, a forest, an exhibition. It’s for the people of the Highlands to decide, so get in touch through responding to our website activities!
From the project lead artists – Sinéad Hargan, Hector McInnes & Cat Meighan
Head over to the Highland Memory Space here to get involved.
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Remembering Together is a national programme of remembrance managed by greenspace scotland, bringing together communities and artists and creative practitioners in collective acts of reflection, remembrance, hope and healing. Supported with funding provided by the Scottish Government, memorial projects are being co-created in every local authority area of Scotland to honour the people we have lost, mark what has changed in our lives and preserve the best of what we learned and created together during the pandemic.
LAC has teamed up with Greenspace Scotland as the delivery partner for Highland.
Our 3 artists that will deliver the project are;
Cat Meighan, from Inverness is a socially engaged contemporary art practitioner and producer, whose practice includes painting, printmaking, sculpture, and installation. Hector MacInnes, a sound artist, musician and producer from the Isle of Skye, works with installation, text, composition and radio. Finally, based in Caithness, Sinéad Hargan is a multi-disciplinary artist working with live performance, participatory performance, sound, and film. Sinéad’s work is often centred around acts of collective grieving.
Based in Caithness, Skye, and Inverness, all three have previously collaborated as part of the national Culture Collective project, working with communities particularly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sinéad said ‘We’re looking forward to bringing our shared collaborative practice to this project, and to working with a range of communities all across the Highlands. We understand that this is a really diverse and expansive region, and we want to respect that, while finding shareable, possible and Highland ideas about commemoration.’
The role of the Remembering Together artist in every part of Scotland is to work with people in ways that are inclusive and relevant with the emphasis on co-creation. As part of the project a learning plan supports artists in communities and acknowledges that we are working in a diversifying Scotland and in a climate emergency. The pandemic is not over, we are living in times of change, and as such co-creating with care is a fundamental value supporting the programme.
Each local authority area has its own page on the Remembering Together website for local updates. Keep an eye on this page and our social channels for updates on the project.
More info on our blog here
