Handbell ringing event in Lairg to mark start of Covid remembrance initiative, the Toll Trail
A community gathering and walk in Lairg on Saturday, June 1, will mark the start of the Toll Trail - a mass participation artwork reflecting individual and community experiences of the coronavirus pandemic.
The event involves people carrying and ringing multiple bells, each with a short inscription relating to the Covid crisis.
Lairg is the first stop for the handbells which will travel along a route around the Highlands this month, carried by primary school children, mountaineers, befrienders groups and many others.
The procession is being filmed by award-winning filmmaker Mike Webster, who is based in Inverness, to create a final documentary work.
The initiative is being delivered by Lyth Arts Centre with the support of Greenspace Scotland and is part of the wider Remembering Together Project - a national programme of remembrance that commissioned artists in each of Scotland’s 32 local authority areas to co-create Covid memorials with people and communities.
Highland artists Hector MacInnes, Isle of Skye, Sinéad Hargan, Caithness and Cat Meighan, Inverness, have been working on the Toll project.
The first phase involved the three artists engaging with the public to hear from individual and community groups about their experiences of the pandemic.
They then worked together to create written contributions or statements to be inscribed on handbells.
The handbells were made by Daniel Freyne and David Snoo Wilson at a forge in Ratho, near Edinburgh. The letters of each inscription were then individually hand-stamped into the metal.
The Lairg event will take place at Ferrycroft Visitor Centre from 2pm-5pm. It is free to attend and all are welcome to “come together, walk, share and reflect”. Refreshments will be provided. Lairg and District Learning Centre have helped Lyth Arts organise the event.
Mike’s film will be released in the autumn and will exist alongside the physical bells as a legacy of the project.
Eventually, the bells will be in the care of trusted guardians - community groups, individuals and organisations - and will become part of a distributed archive. Custodians may wish to ring them now or in the future, and to keep them for future generations to come and ring.
