International Youth Day: the next generation of crofters
For International Youth Day 2024 we speak to Ruaraidh Urpeth, director of Byre to Barn a short film showing crofting issues through the eyes of the next generation.
Film maker Ruaraidh Urpeth was born and grew up in the Outer Hebrides, and he returned to the islands after studying and working in Edinburgh for a decade. His film centres on young crofters and is "explorative, explanatory, a status check on crofting in the Western Isles" using interviews with current young crofters to explore their motivations, hopes and fears for the future.
The film was commissioned by the Outer Hebrides Youth Local Action Group (YLAG), made up of islanders aged 16-30 which exists to give young people a voice and means of making meaningful change in the Outer Hebrides. It aims to support and empower young people, feed into local and national policy, and build connections across the Scotland-wide YLAG network. The group has a active and widening membership and has developed its own programme and priorities, and attends nationwide events including a Youth Climate Camp and the Scottish Rural and Islands (Youth) Parliament held in Fort William in November 2023.
As part of their plan for the year, the YLAG wanted to engage a young film maker from or with ties from to the Outer Hebrides, to produce a film encapsulating the concepts of dùthchas and dualchas, one of the YLAG's identified priority areas. As set out by the YLAG, these concepts "encompass a wide range of activities, sentiments and attitudes related to life in the Outer Hebrides. They relate to topics such as Gaelic language and culture, a traditional lifestyle, sustainable practices, heritage, and a sense of connectedness to the land, landscape and culture."
As Ruaraidh says, reflecting on his motivation for making the film, "crofting is part of the logic of the village". Crofting is all around the people on the islands, in a way which might be different from the mainland. Spatially, villages are organised around the crofts and the crofting system. Temporally, perhaps within a parent's generation and certainly a grandparent's generation, life was very different: more about subsistence; crofting was very much part of the life of the islands; and the trappings of modernity reached the islands later than the mainland. In some cases, the transition from living in black houses to white houses is within a family's living memory. And philosophically, crofting has never been large scale, instead it's about "subsistence, community and survival". In that way, agriculture and crofting feel closer than they might on the mainland, inherently part of the place and people; "People who croft and who don't croft feel that. In that sense the film could only be made here."
The Crofting Commission's recently published statistics show that interest in crofting is growing, with a 5-year high of 510 new entrants in 2022/23. Of these, 29% were young (aged under 41) and 45% were women. These trends, the increased vibrancy and the inflow of youth and women in particular to crofting are reflected in the film. Participants in the film are as young as 10 and there is a large female contingent, including those for whom crofting has been passed down as a family tradition, as well as new entrants. The film features young people living and working their own crofts, and younger participants managing portions of their family crofts. Ruaraidh reflected that school age crofter's contributions to the running of family crofts are so significant that they are given days off school for crofting activities such as lambing.
Dùthchas and dualchas featured as participants' motivations for crofting. For some of the film's female participants a responsibility and desire to carry on crofting and crofting practices drove them to get involved in crofting, alongside the personal fulfilment they got from being outside and with the animals. The notions of dùthchas and dualchas resonated with them, their connection to the islands and to crofting itself. For male participants, culture and heritage were no less important in their decision to croft, but perhaps their motivations were more 'traditional' in the sense of crofts passed from father to son and doing it "because my father did it". Pragmatic and economic considerations also featured. Given the inability to make a living from crofting, all participants had personal motivations driving their decisions to croft beyond the economic. Reflecting on the high proportion of young female crofters, their intrinsic draw to crofting and the uncertainty surrounding future financial support for crofting, Ruaraidh questioned whether this trend might continue and strengthen and what impacts a higher proportion of female crofters might have on wider island communities.
Despite well-known challenges facing (young) crofters and the future of crofting including the price of and access to land, uncertainty around continued support and its economic viability, the overall sentiment is hopeful. The film culminates with the inaugural meeting of the Western Isles Young Crofters group in Steinish Action Mart in Stornoway which took place in March 2024. The group has been set up in response to growing interest in crofting and aims to provide more (regular) opportunities for young crofters to come together. Given the success of this event, attended by over 200 people there is a sense of building momentum and optimism for crofting's future in the Outer Hebrides.
Watch the Byre to Barn film here - a short film produced by Digital Quay Media on behalf of the Outer Hebrides Youth Local Action Group.
The Outer Hebrides Youth Local Action Group is supported by the Outer Hebrides Local Action Group Scottish Government Community Led Local Development budget, as set out in their 2023-24 Community Led Vision.