Knowledge Exchange

'Brodie Illuminated', Brodie Castle, Morayshire (2021) Malcolm Innes

Brodie Illuminated 2021. Created by Malcolm Innes, this was the first year of an ongoing annual event for the National Trust for Scotland at Brodie Castle in Morayshire. This month long, art led event created a night trail around the Brodie estate and incorporated light, sound and projection.

Initial proposals were developed through full size mock-ups and testing of sketchbook ideas on site. These proof of concept tests were used to develop a three year plan for light trail events every November to generate new audiences and income streams for National Trust for Scotland who manage the site.

Brodie Illuminated 2022

The second year of Malcolm Innes’ work with the National Trust for Scotland team at Brodie Castle was thematically based around the heritage of the historic Brodie estate. The narrative Malcolm created for the projections onto the castle was based on making the unseen visible and involved projecting detail of Brodie family portraits onto the exterior facades of the castle. Malcolm used an AI system to create subtle animation of the static oil paintings and built a 7 minute narrative exploration of several generations of the family.

Near the end of the route, another projection installation at the walled garden positioned a projector at ground level shining across the path. Visitors had to walk through the projected image and they were encouraged to ‘put themselves in the picture’. This selfie spot generated a lot of social media posts of the shadow play created by visitors.

Brodie Illuminated 2023

Working with an entirely new management team at Brodie, Malcolm Innes built the 2023 light trail around a series of light art installations exploring aspects of nature on the Brodie estate.

A total of 9 projectors were used to create 7 different animated projection artworks. The 1.5km light trail included multiple audio recordings and projected poetry by writer and poet Mandy Haggith.

"The Knab, Lerwick: Creative Strategic Framework" (2023) Malcolm Innes, Roxane Permar, Siún Carden

Winning a competitive tender from Shetland Arts Development Agency and Shetland Islands Council, The Centre for Island Creativity was commissioned to deliver an arts and creativity strategy for the multi-million pound redevelopment of the site of the former Anderson High School in Lerwick, Shetland. The mixed-use redevelopment will include around 145 new homes with a mix of social rental, mid-market rent and shared equity properties.

The redevelopment is being part-funded by £9.1m of funding from the Scottish Government and is a key programme within the Islands Growth Deal that is supported by the UK and Scottish Governments.

This commission explored the potential use of the already identified public art budgets for the site along with other opportunities for creative input in the project. This final report identified a range of opportunities for artists and other creatives to positively impact the Knab development.

Building on a strong theme of Place that runs through the research and practice of several members of the team at the Centre for Island Creativity, this framework was built from a series of public engagement exercises which gathered opinions from a wide age range of Shetland locals and visitors. Using social art methodologies and research methodologies, thematic coding and general principles were built directly from community workshops and interviews. In this way, the framework was built to directly address the wishes of these local communities.

This framework presents a proposed structure and timeplan to deliver a multi-faceted art strategy which seeks to address the issues raised by the community. This includes:

• Proposed methodologies to provide Shetland based artists with skills and experience of public art projects so that they will be able to undertake these kinds of projects themselves.
• Routes for the local community to be involved in projects from commissioning to installation – and beyond.
• A range of permanent and temporary interventions to provide legacy and ongoing performative involvement for locals and visitors.
• Methods to maximise the value of the public art budget.

The framework places all of this in the context of the Knab site and other existing public art and cultural activities in Shetland. It details creative opportunities in the design of the site’s landscaping, housing and public realm services whilst also evidencing the tangible and intangible benefits of creativity and public art in placemaking.