The stories being told: a sustaining critique of Gaelic language and arts community wealth

Creative and cultural industries are championed across island authorities and enterprise bodies with arts and creativity advocated as drivers for economic growth, community confidence, and well-being. Intrinsic backdrops and community scaffolds of ‘island history and culture’, are integral to sustaining people in and of place (Burnett, Burnett and Danson, 2021). Sustaining of success and future capacity of island cultural wealth is contingent on degrees of small islandness, however; where those ‘best placed’ and most inclined to endeavour such sustaining of cultural wealth and assets (not least in Gaelic’s vernacular communities) can suffer from an over-burdening on the few. Gaelic arts and creative industries have expanded and exceeded far ‘beyond the vernacular’, with globalizing cultural economics well-established and much to celebrate. Chalmers, Danson and colleagues (1996; 2006; 2009) outlined how exposure to and involvement in Gaelic arts and culture, positively impacted on perceptions of the “worth” of the language and its future. Previously, HIE stated that “placing more value on, and investing in, the native language and cultural traditions of the region will result in fortifying cultural identity and sense of place, increasing confidence and self-esteem” and that this in turn can lead to “population retention, inward migration, greater entrepreneurial activity, business creation and ultimately higher GDP”. (Willie Roe Chair of HIE 2006). But by 2012 a study of Arts and Culture in the Western Isles found ambiguity within the artistic and cultural community to the role of Gaelic language. Research to date has variously articulated Gaelic within art and culture policy and informed by an inter-disciplinary perspective we examine island community assets ambitions and socio-economic futures of Gaelic speakers, communities and place. This brief paper critiques arts and cultural sectors as key sites of Gaelic co-production – knowledge, labour and narrative - where the telling of stories of Gaelic wealth, loss and current re-assessment of cultural and arts assets, requires to be continually re-spoken of, and to be heard.