Culture Fund: George Mackay Brown Fellowship - 2023

Orkney Voices and Wirdsmit new writing projects:

Across the year these projects delivered: 8 performances, 26 participants & c250 attendances. 3 public events, 22 participants, c300 attendances. 24 training sessions, c27 participants. 2 new book titles, c400 sales, c55backlist sales. c1,500 unique visits to website.

Orkney Voices has thrived as a group over the past year, meeting fortnightly and produced new work in The Orcadian.  They successfully complied and produced a Johnsmas Foy event for St Magnus Festival in June 2022, and the script (Gallows Ha’) was recorded and later published by Abersee Press and is available online through Vimeo.  The anthology Gousters, Glims and Veerie-orums continues to sell well and has brought the group’s work to a wider audience.  Some members have continued to attend the group online, and they have welcomed some new members over the course of the year.

Wirdsmit writing group for young people has also thrived and developed over the past year, continuing to meet monthly and collaborate with events such as Orkney Nature Festival and the Orkney Science Festival.  A drop-in session was held at the Science Festival, which attracted some new members.  The young writers continue to develop and grow in confidence, with some former members returning to help with the group.  They are fully meeting in person again after the constraints of the pandemic, but retain the capability of holding sessions online, with a wide reach to young people throughout the islands.

These two groups have been key to our development as an organisation, fulfilling our core aim of supporting new writing and writers in Orkney.  Orkney Voices has given a platform to those writing in their native Orcadian, which is an important contribution to the development of creative writing in Scotland.  Wirdsmit has given space and creative opportunities to young people outside school, some of whom have been disengaged with the more formal school system.

As an organisation we are very proud to facilitate and support these key groups, which have enriched the lives of the participants and their audiences and have added incalculably to the body of Orkney’s literature.