Big day for Newtonmore as celebrated art installation is formally dedicated
Badenoch's MSP Kate Forbes has officially dedicated Newtonmore's new art installation after three years' hard work by the whole of the community – and some 30 years of dreaming about how best to set off the centre-piece of the Square.
Rain could not dampen the proceedings this afternoon as the wood and stone sculpture, complete with two massive camans to form a unique seat, was praised for the way it captures the past, present and future of a 'very unique' community.
Local TV personality and author, walker Cameron McNeish welcomed a crowd of enthusiastic supporters to the event and introduced the project's spokesperson Amanda Frazer who was full of thanks for the many funders and backers who had ensured that NAP – the Newtonmore Art Project – ended in triumph after a long consultation process which had enveloped the entire community, including its primary schoolchildren, who had helped in providing some of the words which appeared on the boards which completed the installation.
"Overwhelmingly the community and NAP voted for the same design of the eight submissions.
"Stuart Murdoch's design was everyone's choice and here it is today to enjoy."
Kate Forbes, local MSP and cabinet secretary for finance and the economy, was full of praise for the way the people of Newtonmore had seen it through in such tough circumstances including, of course, the Covid-19 pandemic.
The last 18 months had seen people struggling with isolation and business struggling with the economic stresses of the situation, said the member for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, but the crisis had effectively "stripped everything back to community" to survive the challenges.
The installation captured that spirit and celebrated all the things which made Newtonmore, she said, "its landscape, the mountains, the strath, the river, the Gaelic medium being preserved by the local primary school, language itself, the local industries and sporting expertise, the culture that will never change. It's all represented here in this installation which will still be here in a hundred years."
See more on this story in Thursday's Strathy
