Wayfinder 26/27

Course description

Reothart nan Ealain is excited to be offering Wayfinder, an online course running for 12 sessions across six months from September to March. Facilitated by Gaelic visual artist Mairi Gillies, these fortnightly sessions encourage artists to embed their creative practice into place-based, embodied knowing by exploring Gaelic ways of seeing in relation to both the physical and inner landscapes. Escape into your own life. Steady away, Wayfinder. In Gaelic culture, way-markers were often stones or cairns sometimes to be used from the sea to navigate, other times to mark routes across the landscape or boundaries. They were named, used and understood as visual cues in relation to movement and the environment by humans. There is a rich tapestry of Gaelic ‘ways of seeing’ and a deep cultural connection with the landscape, its form, its beings and its lore. These come together to form a ‘living landscape’ and it’s from understanding these interconnected relationships that our course stems. The Wayfinder course will take participants on a voyage exploring personal, pace-based themes as routes back into our creative practices. Working as a collective, supporting our peers, we will form an open and fun learning environment to bring awareness around our internal navigation points which steer our creative practices. During each session we will use particular ‘Gifts from the landscape’ as inspiration into making, into self-discovery, exploring themes of sea, island, cave, cliff, shore, river, wellspring, mountain, moor, sheiling, croft and finally, home. In each session Mairi will present ‘inspiration sets & reels’ to discover how Gaelic culture has explored and expressed relationships to these land-forms. These ‘sets and reels’ weave an intuitive dance across the landscape and into the home, with poetry, song, story and walks and will comprise of audio, film, text and will serve as invitations for participants to respond to in the intervening fortnight before coming together as a group to share our experiences and set the next theme. Any discipline of artist or level of maker is welcome. Urban or rural, newbie or established artist, Gael or other – all welcome! This course will be delivered in English, looking at Gaelic cultural ‘ways of seeing’. For more info and a course outline, please email info@reothart.com