Chapter 17: Rural Regeneration Through Arts and Culture: Shifting Perspectives on Gaelic and Enterprise Contexts

Against the historical policy backdrop to industrialise Scotland’s Highlands and Islands region (Burnett, 2011; Hunter, 1991), followed by late 20th-century UK national deindustrialisation (Danson, 1991), a complex and contentious legacy regarding socio-economic development, rural regeneration, and culture, arts and language enterprise has emerged. In the early 1990s, a key entrepreneurship policy event occurred with the juncture of replacing the former Highlands and Islands Development Board (the HIDB, established in 1965) with the new Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) agency. This transition platformed a mind-shift from old to new thinking on rural development enterprise, towards a model of endogenous growth. The refreshed narrative was now one of ‘lessons learned’, with a formal reappraising of the HIE potential. This shift underpinned HIE’s early regional development ambition to address HIDB failings, by articulating ‘the people’ – communities and their local culture – more fully in this ambition. Notably, with the regional agency’s geographical remit mapped significantly to the historical geography of the Gàidhealtachd,¹ Scotland’s Gaelic language and culture were identified as emblematic of the region’s cultural wealth. Today, HIE as the key enterprise stakeholder continues to advocate Gaelic’s role in wider regional ambition (HIE, 2023, p. 20): the ‘region’s Gaelic language and heritage is engaging and authentic and is an economic, social and cultural asset’. Certainly, entrepreneurial endeavour harnessing cultural assets via place-making, and targeted language heritage promotion is well established today, evidenced especially in cultural tourism growth, media clusters (including Gaelic) and arts enterprise success. Nonetheless, complexities and complacencies inform the relationship between Gaelic, enterprise and regeneration in Scotland in both rural and urban contexts, and their interface. The future remains unwritten for now for Gaelic’s minority language enterprise in rural areas, and this chapter offers some concluding comment on what may lie ahead.