Matilda’s Bothy Project
CREATING MUSIC, PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO IN RESPONSE TO WALKING IN THE HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND AND STAYING IN BOTHIES (basic shelters for walkers)
Matilda's Bothy Project is an on-going project celebrating the connection between music and walking, exploring new performance sites and maintaining and respecting the wilderness of the Highlands of Scotland and its many bothies, maintained by the MBA- Mountain Bothies Association.
We would like to explore and reflect upon people's journeys in the Scottish mountains through music and other art forms. Our goals are:
To encourage people to share their walking and bothy experiences with us and help us to create new art to express these findings.
To create new music, photography and video in response to our personal experiences in the Highlands.
To explore the importance and meaning of bothies to the people who use them and live close to them.
To find out about the 'quiet voice' within us or that part of us that can get lost or distorted when we are working away in our everyday lives back home. Do we connect with a more permanent world out there in the wilderness in comparison to our faster changing world of technology back home? Or is it something more simple, perhaps appreciating the beauty around us and the good physical feeling one gets from walking a long way?
In A'Chuil bothy feeling tired!
I am a composer. I have expressed my relationship to walking and the mountains through music for many years......this project would like to start by encouraging people to express whatever they like about their journeys or experiences in the mountains. We encourage people to search for reasons why they come to the hills and stay in bothies. Perhaps just for a break or for more complex reasons. Please share your experiences by either emailing me or writing your thoughts and ideas in the bothy books we have left in the bothies throughout the Highlands. Then myself, photographer Nick Rawle and playwright, Martin Travers can start to create music and multi media pieces of art in response to your experiences....
OUR WINTER BOTHY TRIP
Our first journey specifically for this project, was a trip through Knoydart, involving myself, as composer/musician, and Ben Winston, photographer. The pieces of music and video were created in response to our physical and psychological experiences over six days of walking and staying in MBA bothies.
Knoydart towards Glen Pean and Loch Arkaig
THE MUSIC AND VIDEO PERFORMANCE
The First Performance was in - January 2010 at Mull Theatre and Cove Park:
... a music and video performance in response to Matilda's arduous six-day walking/bothy trip through Knoydart, The Highlands, that took place over the New Year of 2008/9.
I selected ideas from the material collected on the walk, such as thoughts from my journal, sound files and photographs and found that all these ideas came under about seven stages in the walk. In the performance, seven pieces of music, songs and video reflect these seven stages of the walk.
As well as producing and presenting music and visuals that were exciting and beautiful to hear and see, we hope that anyone who has taken part in such a physically exhausting trip related to our performance! We are planning to tour this performance again. And if you are a mountaineer or a hill walker or someone who simply loves the outdoors and wants to experience new music, we are sure you will find something from it.
SUPPORTING THE MBA AND CELEBRATING THE WILDERNESS OF SCOTLAND
Through this performance and many more to follow, we want to help the promotion and maintenance of the Mountain Bothies, in partnership with http://www.mountainbothies.org.uk (The Mountain Bothies Association) and help keep safe and alive the wilderness of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.