We have been running an informal residency programme at our base, Aras Nam Fir Chlis, since 2018, inviting artists we have met on our travels to stay in our guest apartment as they develop new work. Here are some of them.
Naomi McDougall Jones
Aras Nam Fir Chlis, November 2025
Artist Gathering, An Lanntair, 7 November 2025
We were introduced to writer and film-maker Naomi McDougall Jones by our friend and long-time sruth-mara collaborator Elspeth Turner. Naomi visited us for a second time in 2025 as she was researching and writing her third book, a follow up to her forthcoming American Selkie: One Woman’s Journey Back to Wildness, Ancestral Wisdom, and Magic. Describing herself as a ‘storyteller, change maker and future-weaver’, Naomi is also the author of The Wrong Kind of Women, a book about the exclusion of women from the film industry, and her feature films have won 14 festival awards and been distributed worldwide.
Amble Skuse & Boško Begović
Aras Nam Fir Chlis, 19-23 September 2024.
Artist Gathering, An Lanntair, 20 September 2024.
Composer and sound artist Amble Skuse and writer, martial and movement artist Boško Begović visited Lewis in September 2024 to develop a piece called All Who are Weary and Heavy-Laden, I Will Give You Rest, ahead of a performance at Ireland’s Bounce festival. In the performance, Bosko wears a suit loaded with stones to represent the burdens society places on disabled people, his movements tracked by body sensors which trigger interviews from disabled people around the topic.
During their stay, Amble and Boško presented their work at one of An Lanntair’s monthly Artist Gatherings, as well as creating a film of the piece at Mealasta beach.
Roberto Trotta
Aras Nam Fir Chlis, June 2024
Roberto Trotta is an astrophysicist, author, and award-winning science communicator who we first met at the 2020 Hebridean Dark Skies Festival, after which sruth-mara began developing a stage version of his book The Edge of the Sky. Roberto’s next book, Starborn, was inspired by that same 2020 journey (and a visit to the Calanais stones in particular), and he returned to Uig in June 2024 for a talk about the book at Calanais Visitor Centre, and to witness the lunar standstill and summer solstice at Calanais. The photo above was taken at Gallan Head.
Momus
Aras Nam Fir Chlis and An Lanntair, November 2019
Cult Scottish musician and writer Momus visited Lewis, at Andrew’s invitation, to take part in two events at Faclan: the Hebridean Book Festival. It was a pleasure to have him as our house guest for the weekend, having travelled by land and sea all the way from France for his first visit to the Outer Hebrides – a trip he considered documenting in ‘Parachute’ a satirical concept album about Hebridean life and culture from the perspective of an artist who had spent only 48 hours there.
Withered Hand
Aras Nam Fir Chlis, June 2019
Live show, Uig Community Centre, Sat 8 June 2019
Withered Hand is the songwriting output of our Scottish musician friend Dan Willson, who has released three widely acclaimed albums and several EPs over the past decade. In June 2019 Dan became our second musician in residence, working on songs for his (then unrecorded) third album and playing a solo show at Uig Community Centre for which audience members travelled from all over Lewis and Harris. Dan is one of our favourite people and it was lovely having him as a house guest for the week. The show was brilliant too.
Juliana Capes
Aras Nam Fir Chlis, October 2018
Juliana Capes (pictured here making a new friend on our croft) is a brilliant Edinburgh-based visual artist who makes installations and durational artwork. In October 2018 Juliana was sruth-mara’s first visual artist in residence, developing work for 2019 exhibitions at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh and An Lanntair.
Kirsty Law
Uig Community Centre, 3-5 September 2018
Kirsty Law at Uig Community Centre
Singer-songwriter Kirsty Law visited Uig in September 2018 to develop a piece of work exploring the sense of place found through folksong (particularly when listening to field recordings), and the sense of empowerment that can be found, in an ever-scarier global world, through the sharing of songs and the development of writing in a minority language. With support from Creative Scotland, sruth-mara facilitated a three day residency at Uig Community Centre, during which Kirsty explored her ideas in conversation with people from the area, premiering her new songs as part of a live performance on Wednesday 5 September.
Kirsty draws on Scots musical traditions while frequently collaborating with other artists. She wrote about her residency here.
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