Aberdeenshire Phase 2 underway

Aberdeenshire Council’s Remembering Together initiative has appointed a team comprising a musician, a furniture maker and a walking artist to create a fitting tribute to remember the impact COVID has had on individuals and communities, focusing on hope and healing.

Claudia Zeiske has been commissioned as lead artist, to coordinate the work across a number of communities over the next nine months.

She led the initial phase of this engaging arts project, having walked a 250 km journey in the Summer of 2022 from the summit of Ben Macdui to the ports of Peterhead and Fraserburgh. Hundreds of individuals and groups walked and met up with the artist, discussing their experiences of COVID and sharing their thoughts on what a remembering piece could look like for Aberdeenshire.

Furniture-maker, Chris Nangle, creates bespoke ecologically responsible furniture in the landscape. He will work with Zeiske and the communities of Aberdeenshire to source locations for several unique structures that will be bedded into the landscape, places for people to visit, reflect and contemplate.

Aberdeenshire’s world-renowned fiddler, Dr Paul Anderson, will capture the inspiration of the stories and emotions that have been shared as part of this initiative, in new compositions authentic to the people and places he visits. The tunes will be performed on the violin and recorded as pieces intended to heal and lift the spirits.

In the tradition of many of Scotlands great fiddlers, Paul is a composer of some repute, having composed over 300 pieces in the Scots style. His music provided the theme tune for the film Red Rose about the life of Robert Burns, Paul composed and recorded the theme music for the PBS television show, Tartan TV in the USA and in 2008 he was the musical director for HMT Aberdeen’s critically acclaimed production of Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon.