Description given on Youtube:
The project aims to raise awareness of the significance of walking with livestock and in particular, cattle throughout history, socially and economically. We aim to walk cattle along an ancient drovers’ track from Knockengorroch farm in Galloway to Bellsbank in East Ayrshire. We will create a film with Stevie Whiteford, a photographic body of work by Award winning photographer Alice Myers www.alicemyers.net and a music and sound collaboration between Nick Jenkins and Pete Smith.
The relationship between Scotland’s people, their land and their cattle stretches back many hundreds of years. Cattle are indigenous to this island and were once the lifeblood and wealth of the country. In an upland landscape where growing crops on high ground and living without meat in the harsh winter months were not viable options, cattle were sacred to the people. Human and beast necessarily formed a relationship that predated the economic. In later years, and after the Act of Union in 1707, this developed into a highly lucrative trade for Scotland, which formed the backbone of the economy until the arrival of the railways in the mid 19th century and the decline of small scale crofts.
In an increasingly urbanised world, contact with the rural landscape, and understanding of how humans dwell in it, is increasingly a mystery to most of the population. The countryside is seen as something to be looked at, to be preserved in some pristine state of being.
At the same time, amongst social movements to ‘return to the land’ the relationship with these beasts, that humans have co-existed with for centuries, has been relatively un-explored.
Our drove, one small journey in a corner of Scotland, becomes representative of many pertinent issues facing us today.