Practice research on the Ross of Mull and Iona
Floating Worlds is a place-based practice research project developed between 2020 and 2026 with communities on the Ross of Mull and Iona in the Inner Hebrides. Centred on performance but extending into film, book-making, visual art and participatory workshops, the project investigates how creative practice can contribute to rethinking relationships between island communities and their environments in response to ecological, demographic and economic change. Through successive phases of practice, it develops an archipelagic dramaturgical approach that brings different places, cultures, disciplines and forms of knowledge into relation without collapsing their differences.
The research developed through three interconnected phases: Floating Worlds: Erraid Sound, a book and film; The Seaweed Gatherers performance, developed through research and workshops in Scotland and Japan; and The Seaweed Gatherings, a programme of participatory events with communities on the Ross of Mull. Across these phases, seaweed emerged as an increasingly important material, cultural and symbolic focus for exploring questions of ecology, community, resilience and reciprocity.
Floating Worlds: Erraid Sound
2020–22 | Book + film
Developed through residencies on the Ross of Mull and made with local community participants, Erraid Sound explored relationships between landscape, island life and ecology. The work began to develop an archipelagic dramaturgy, informed in part by Japanese theatrical and landscape traditions.
The Seaweed Gatherers
2022 | Research + workshops + performance
Research and workshops in Scotland and Japan led to a performance drawing on Mekari, a fifteenth-century Noh play and ritual of seaweed gathering. The work brought Hebridean and Japanese landscapes, cultures and performance traditions into relation through seaweed as material, image and practice.
The Seaweed Gatherings
2024–25 | Participatory programme + documentary film
A programme of participatory events on the Ross of Mull brought artistic, ecological, scientific, culinary and community practices into relation through seaweed. The gatherings explored seaweed as a shared community resource and as a focus for questions of reciprocity, resilience and sustainable local development. The programme was documented through a documentary film.
Place and partnership
Floating Worlds is rooted in the landscapes and communities of the Ross of Mull and Iona, particularly around Erraid, Fionnphort and Bunessan. The area’s distinctive island and tidal geographies, its small and dispersed population, and the ecological, demographic and economic pressures facing the community have provided both the context and material for the research.
Central to the project has been a sustained collaboration with KNOCKvologan Studio on the Ross of Mull, led by artists Miek Zwamborn and Rutger Emmelkamp. Beginning with the first residencies in 2020–21, this partnership provided a base from which the research could develop through continuing engagement with local landscapes, participants and organisations.