The digital fèis was a celebration of community heritage held twice, in September 2022 and August 2023. Digital activities involved digitising artefacts from the community, recording stories, listening to Gaelic voices, and exploring heritage places through virtual reality. A ceilidh also took place with music and drama from youths of North Uist.
Community Digitising
At the centre of our activities was a call to the community to bring their own objects related to heritage. Objects varied from family heirlooms to crafting tools and other working tools. Most of the objects were digitised in 3D. People could also record their stories, explaining the history and importance of the artefact, thus creating an interactive digital North Uist community museum.
These objects do not form part of a museum collection, yet are now available to the public. Moreover, the owners of these objects had an active role in documenting the artefact’s history and metadata, providing valuable information that goes beyond a name on a label.
This archive contains over 15 3D objects and over 20 associated stories and photographs.
Place Names
A new map of North Uist was created digitally allowing community members to add Gaelic place names. Where possible, the pronunciation was also recorded, and additional information or related media were added. This is an active map, so you can continue to add places and information to the map through this link.
Young People’s Ceilidh
One of the events during the digital fèis was a celebratory ceilidh with young people from across North Uist. The students are part of the Fèis music group, and they entertained their audience with a selection of music and songs played on accordions, bagpipes, keyboard, and chanter. On 6th December 2022, these recordings formed part of a concert of music from North Uist, streamed online on Zoom and Facebook. The concert pieces can be played in the below gallery:
Ceilidh 2023
The youths were brought back in the second edition of the Digital Fèis and this time were joined by other singers from the community. The new songs and music can be seen here: