http://www.northlandsglass.com/

http://www.katewilliams.org/

"FaceNorth" visual arts residency is jointly run by Northlands Creative Glass and Lyth arts Centre. Funded by the Scottish arts Council and Caithness and Sutherland Enterprise agency it is one of the biggest visual and community artist residencies of its kind. The residency artists who spend 50% of their time on their own work and 50 % of their time developing relationships with communities through outreach art workshops. The project gives community groups with little or no arts experience the chance to engage with the professional artists creating artworks with a shared sense of ownership and local identity. Areas chosen for the artists to work in are Wick, Thurso and Lybster & Dunbeath. The residency started on 6th Febuary and culminates with an exhibition of works, both own and community, at Lyth arts centre on 3rd July.

Kate Williams from London works in glass. Her focus will be to develop glass works that reflects the industrial processes of the Dounreay nuclear facility, whilst drawing on experiences of her time in Caithness.

Shelagh Swanson is a local artist from Bower who makes artwork assemblages from found objects and images that are relevant to place, past and present and people that occupied the said time.

Janis Mackay from Edinburgh, Scotland is a poet, writer, storyteller and voice teacher. She has an MA in Creative Writing and Personal Development and is currently working on her first collection of poetry, inspired by the land and a sense of place. During the residency in Caithness Janis hopes to find inspiration in the land and seascapes of the far north and to produce a small collection of poetry from and for Caithness. She also hopes to support people in the area with their own creative writing and to put together a collection of poetry where the many different voices of people in Caithness can find expression.

Over the past several weeks they have been doing outreach art workshops with young people, ladies groups and after school groups in Wick, developing partnerships with community programmes like the Pultneytown Peoples Project and Wick Youth Club facilitated through Highland Councils Learning & Leisure Dept. The emphasis has been to encourage learning through fun practical activities. One young peoples group at Wick Youth Club has been working on a 'Scrap Heap Challenge' project; taking apart old televisions and transforming them into contemporary sculptures to examine the way we perceive television and its influence on modern society. All the Wick groups have visited the excellent Northlands Glass studios in Lybster and sampled the delights of making etched and fused glass . Kate William's explained "The technique of making fused glass involves combining metal foils, wire and coloured glass pieces sandwiched between sheets of clear glass which are then kiln fired ". The culmination of the work produced in Wick can be seen at an exhibition at Lyth Arts centre starting on the 3rd July.