Travelling the Archive: Uncovering Memory in Kyleakin with the Joan Wilcock Collection centred on a collection of 35mm Kodachrome slides taken from 1959 to 1973 by an English tourist, Joan Wilcock (1895-1994). She was a frequent visitor to the Isle of Skye with ‘snap-shot’ photographs of her in the village of Kyleakin, dating from the 1930s. Over 400 slides were taken during this period and were gifted to Highland Council Archive in 2008. This collection now forms a portrait of the community before the bridge to the mainland was built and the famous Skye ferry ceased to operate, changing the geography and the way of life in Kyleakin.

The notion of ‘travelling the archive’ is both practical and evocative. People either travel to archives literally or virtually, rather than archives physically coming to them. In this project, the collection was taken from the Skye and Lochalsh Archive Centre in Portree to Kyleakin in a number of ways, including 35mm analogue slide shows and digital outdoor projections. By bringing together the past and present in these ways, Travelling the Archive encounters questions of shared heritage, living memory and lived experience.

Commissioned by Atlas Arts, and in collaboration with the Kyleakin Local History Society and the Skye and Lochalsh Archive Centre.

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