If you'd like to use the Virtual Acces Guide just ask at reception when you visit.

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We have produced an accessibility guide which is available on our website. We are always appreciate of feedback so do let us know if there are further improvements we can make.

The guide is presented on a large iPad and gives access to all the audio visual displays, highlights key objects in each display, and provides panoramas of the Daily Life Room and Mackay Centre.

Instead we turned to a digital solution and the team at Abound Design & Interpretation Ltd and CMC Associates Ltd created our Virtual Access Guide.

Our architects, Oberlanders Architects, took advice from the Sutherland Access Forum to make practical solutions where we could. Unfortunately a lift was unfeasible within the building.

Just as those who were removed during the Highland Clearances took their culture to new parts of the world, so did their more ancient forebears, with their beaker designs and funerary practices.

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Grave goods were objects of significance to the departed. This practice of burying them was present in many cultures and provides archaeologists with information to help us understand past peoples.

The Chealamy Beaker was discovered by chance during road widening works in 1981. The beaker was found in a burial cist, a small stone-built coffin like structure, at Chealamy in Strathnaver. The beaker was found alongside the remains of a human skeleton, suggestive of grave goods.

One of the oldest objects in #StrathnaverCollection represents a story of in-migration to Strathnaver, that of the Beaker people about 4,000 years ago. The style originates in Iberia, modern day Spain and Portugal, and was brought to Britain in the late Neolithic period about 4,400 years ago.

To the environment, peoples' livelihood's, and to the way we connect as individuals & a society... we'd love to hear your thoughts. Is AI a useful tool, or a step to far?

AI can be used very effectively as part of the visitor experience and enhance how we tell stories but we are conscious that its use can be negative too. With limited budgets it can enable experimentation & may allow us to do things we may otherwise be unable to afford but at what cost?

Finally, Photoshop was used to adjust the colours and add in extra details, like the Macdonald tartan. As you can see the results can be impressive but they take time and skill."

We fed in the information we knew about the witnesses and evicted, including occupations and age at the time of the clearances. This was cross referenced with painting styles from carefully selected contemporary artists, lighting and desired expression to help generate suitable portraits.

"While visitors listened to their accounts, we wanted to project the faces of the evicted onto the minister's pulpit. We needed to add a suite of powerful new portraits and as an experiment we turned to AI software.

We've given them voice but how do we give those who suffered the removals a face? We've paintings of the powerful protagonists whose quest for agricultural improvement inflicted so much hardship, but what of the powerless? As CMC Associates, the team behind our audio visual display, explains:

So it was important that when giving voice to those who suffered the removals that we used authentic local voices from our community and our volunteers did a wonderful job of bringing their forebears stories to life.