Dig where we stand
A programme of ten workshops for Fèis Rois and Dingwall 800
Wednesday mornings, 10:00 – 12:30 | Robertson House, Greenhill Street, Dingwall
26 August – 18 Nov 2026 (with a break for October Holidays)
About the programme
From late summer to midwinter, these sessions invite you to dig where you stand: to explore the cultural memory of Dingwall and its surrounding landscape. Countless generations before ours had a closer connection to nature and the changing seasons, bound up with a sense of community and conviviality across the rhythm of the agricultural year. Each week we explore a different part of that world – from stories of drovers, herring girls and radical resistance, to harvest seeds, plants and birds, to the music and song of the winter ceilidh. Part conversation, part creative workshop. Drop in for one session or follow the season as it turns. Open to all. Bring what you know!
Background
This programme was developed by ethnologist and creative practitioner Mairi McFadyen for Fèis Rois and Dingwall 800, exploring the cultural and ecological memory of the local area through conversation and creativity. Dig Where You Stand takes its name from an international public history movement that invites communities to research and reclaim local histories.
Wed 26 Aug – The Market Town | Am Baile Margaidh with Richard Lockett
Late summer. For centuries, Dingwall was one of the great meeting points of the Highland year. Drovers brought cattle and sheep from across the north and west – from Kintail and the far northwest, from Ullapool, from Braemore and Garve, from farms and crofts across Easter Ross. The drovers are one of the most vivid expressions of what made Dingwall a market town, celebrated in a bronze statue outside the mart today.
That world is now largely invisible, but it is still written into the landscape – in placenames that mark crossings, fords, and routes through the hills, in poetry, story and song celebrating colourful characters and dramatic events.
Ross-shire farmer, ecologist, and modern-day drover Richard Lockett has helped bring that tradition back into lived experience. Alongside archive voices, he will help us trace the drove routes that converged on Dingwall, discussing the relevance of cattle to ecological restoration in the modern era.
Format: talk, maps, archives, writing, tea and cake
2 Sept – Herring Season | Tèamhair an Sgadain with Olivia and Maureen Ross
Early September. The East Coast herring season is at its height: the fleet and the gutting crews followed the fish southward – Wick and Caithness first, then down through the Easter Ross ports, Balintore among them, before moving on to Fraserburgh, Peterhead and further south by October.
For generations, women from the Highlands and Islands travelled with the season, gutting and packing up to sixty barrels a day, living at the harbourside, and sending money home. This session explores their work, songs, and knowledge – specifically the work songs that kept pace with the knife, that named the ports and the people, that held community together across distance.
This session welcomes musician Olivia Ross and Maureen Ross from Balintore. Drawing on Fèis Rois’s ‘Kin and the Community Project’ celebrating the life of Belle Ann MacAngus (1889-1980) – a Gaelic speaker from Hilton in the Seaboard Villages – we will listen to archive voices and learn some herring songs ourselves.
Format: talk, archives, conversation, singing, tea and cake.
9 Sept – Histories of Resistance | Is Treasa Tuath na Tighearna with Col Gordon and Cat Meighan, Highland Zine Bothy
In September 1884, the Highland Land League gathered in Dingwall to draw up their demands for land reform: what became known as the Dingwall Programme. Crofters from across the Black Isle marched three and a half miles to town carrying banners, led by a piper.
The Land League’s slogan was Is treasa tuath na tighearna (the people are mightier than a laird) – a conviction forged in rent strikes, land raids, and organised resistance. In September 2024, 140 years later, Dingwall Community Centre marked that anniversary, planning a renewed movement for land justice. In conversation with land activist Col Gordon, this session explores the radical traditions of this place: its history, songs, and continuing relevance.
That radical tradition has long found its voice in print. Newspapers such as The Highlander, founded in Inverness in 1873, helped carry the crofters’ cause across the Highlands. In that spirit, artist Cat Meighan of the Highland Zine Bothy will lead us in zine-making as a contemporary folk form.
Format: talk, archives, conversation, zine making, tea and cake.
16 Sept – Farewell to the Swallows | Slàn le Gobhlain-gaoithe with Sheila Wickens and Julie Fowlis
By late September the last of the swallows are leaving. The summer migrants begin their long journey south, while the first winter visitors begin arriving from the north. The movements of the birds mark the turning of the season as surely as shortening days and colder evenings.
Gaelic bird names often reflect their character, movement, or voice – attention held in language and story. This session reflects on the birds that shape the Highland seasons, and the traditions of noticing, naming, and remembering that connect people to the world around them. We will be joined by artist Sheila Wickens to lead a bird-inspired workshop – sketching birds, creating patterns, short writing. Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis will share and teach us a song of the swallow’s return, reflecting on the bird’s place in Gaelic song and seasonal imagination.
Format: conversation, drawing or writing, learning a song, tea and cake.
23 Sept – Plants and Place | Lusan an Àite with Suzann Barr, Abriachan Forest
The season is turning. Late summer into autumn is a time of transition in the plant world: growth slows, seed heads ripen, and the colours of the landscape begin to shift. Rowan berries burn orange-red against the sky, while at the field edge devil’s-bit scabious holds its vivid purple – one of the last flowers of the year.
This session is an invitation to notice the plants still growing in verges and woodland, along riverbanks and field edges, and to ask what they reveal about the landscape at the turning of the season. Suzann Barr of Abriachan Forest brings her deep knowledge of Highland ecology and outdoor learning to this exploration of plants and place. We will explore the stories, uses, and meanings carried by late-season plants, before trying our hand at some plant printing using gathered leaves and flowers.
Format: talk, conversation, art-making, tea and cake.
30 Sept – Seed Stories | Sgeulachdan nan Sìol with Haley Shepherd, Seeds of Scotland
Harvest time, buain. A seed carries its own story: the climate it adapted to, the seasons it survived, the hands that selected it, and the communities that kept it going across generations. In this sense, seeds are like living archives.
Haley Shepherd from Seeds of Scotland explores the world of heritage and heirloom varieties and the practice of seed saving as an act of cultural and ecological care. The idea of seed sovereignty – the right of communities to save, share and shape their own seeds – runs through this work, raising questions about what can be grown, what is lost, and who decides.
This session also offers practical guidance on seed saving – how to collect, dry, store and exchange seed – offering simple ways to begin working with seed as something to keep and pass on. We will also have a seed swap – bring your spare seeds and begin to plan for next year’s growing!
Format: talk, conversation, guidance, seed swap, tea and cake.
7 Oct – The Apple Tree | Craobh nan Ubhal
Late harvest, buain. The apples are coming in. Scotland grows many apples, each with its own character, flavour and story. The Coul Blush apple, bred at Contin in the 1820s, is thought to be the most northerly apple variety in the UK. It is one of dozens of Scottish heritage apples, many now surviving only in old gardens and forgotten orchards.
This session is a celebration of the apple as local food: something grown, shared and enjoyed in community, connecting us to the land on our doorstep and to the people who have tended it across generations. We’ll explore the history of apple cultivation, heritage varieties, and what it means to plant and care for a tree whose life stretches far beyond our own. In Gaelic tradition, the apple tree is one of the seven chieftain trees, associated with nourishment, shelter and beauty. We will learn the song Craobh nan Ubhal – a beautiful Gaelic blessing invoking the protection of sun, moon and wind, using the image of the apple tree to express affection and a sense of home.
Format: talk, conversation, song, apple tasting, tea and cake.
4 Nov – The Lovedarg | Work Done for Love with Mairi McFadyen
Final harvest, buain. The lovedarg was a tradition of rural Scotland – a day’s work given freely to a neighbour in need: ploughing a field, bringing in a harvest, whatever help was needed. It was not charity, but an expression of care and of the understanding that you never knew when you might need the same in return. Lovedargs were also celebrations with food and music, the work made joyful by the gathering.
In this session we draw on archive material and oral histories recalling lovedargs shaped by kindness, generosity and reciprocity. From there, the question opens into the present: where do forms of lovedarg still exist today, even if they are not named as such? Together we will create hopeful maps of our home place, imagining how cultures of mutual care might take shape in everyday life: what people could share, grow, repair, exchange and support together.
Format: talk, archives, conversation, hopeful mapping, tea and cake.
11 Nov – Healing Threads | Snàithean Slànachaidh with Claire MacKay, Herbal Heritage Scotland
As the season turns toward winter, the medicine cabinet matters. The Highland tradition of plant medicine is extraordinarily deep – encoded in Gaelic literature and in orally collected accounts gathered from living communities. Mary Beith’s book Healing Threads (2018) remains the essential companion to this tradition, and this session draws on its riches.
Claire MacKay brings her knowledge as a medical herbalist and ethnobotanical researcher to the plants of this place: what grew here, what was used, what is still carried in the names and practices of the area. November is the time for what has been harvested, dried and preserved: the tinctures and teas that see a community through the dark months. We will work with seasonal herbs to make simple tea blends, with an introduction to harvesting, drying and storing plants for winter use. Claire also loves a song, so maybe there will be a song as well!
Format: talk, conversation, tea tasting, singing, tea and cake
18 Nov – Winter Gathering | An Taigh Cèilidh Geamhraidh with Sophie Stephenson
Winter is approaching. After the harvest, after the drove roads have emptied, after the fishing season has wound down and the year’s work is done, people would come together. The taigh cèilidh was a sustaining part of winter life in the Highlands – neighbours gathering to share news, stories, songs, music and dance.
Ethnologist Sophie Stephenson has researched the tradition of the taigh cèilidh in Gaelic-speaking Scotland and Cape Breton. Drawing on archive sources and living memory, Sophie and Mairi will reflect on culture as something lived, shared and carried forward between generations. As the season turns, this session becomes a ceilidh in its own right: a chance to take stock together, share what has been learned across the programme, and carry it onward through music, song, story and perhaps even some dancing!
Format: talk, archives, conversation, music, song, step dance, tea and cake
