I got back to Glasgow, which was to be my new home, and started to draw together ideas for a project on Eigg. I spoke to representatives from the History Society and the Eigg Trust, who said they thought it was an interesting idea to have an artist in residence, but that they had hated one [not to be mentioned by name] large landscape sculpture that had appeared in the region a couple of years before. I was given a month to put something forward before their next annual meeting, preferably a project that did not "plonk art onto the landscape and ruin the view!". Everyone I had met liked to talk about the debates and their experiences, but few could see them becoming visual art.
I was a little nervous about the familiar pattern of support by groups up to a certain level like this, and I truly did not know if they would support me in the long run. I had previously done projects in museums and libraries and more often than not been given the cold shoulder by the institutional hierarchy. Recent No's included the prestigious Bodleian Library and the National Archives at Kew. Both had said yes until it reached the head of the institution who had the final say, which was No. When projects did get the go ahead (such as the Leicester Museums), they were often much reduced from my original proposals and their impacts' minimised by the needs of these institutions. I ended up conducting guerilla exhibitions, book projects on the side, and other ways to get a good project to emerge from the periphery of artistic constrainment. This, you might say, is fair enough. But in terms of aspiration and what I was able to actually make, I had reached a glass ceiling. Even the regional Arts Council in the Midlands would have thought twice about funding me to go back to a museum, knowing that what I could achieve there would be only a marginal step forward without the free reign given to more "experienced" artists, and other such paradoxes.
I highlighted several key locations on the island where both tourists and Eiggach got their information from, and developed ideas for interventions and performances that would link them together and explore the debates relevant to islanders. I put in the proposal for Eigg at the end of October 2008… and waited.
