Cateran’s Common Wealth is all about celebrating and sustaining the things that belong to all of us – our common wealth as it is often called –  and one of our most cherished examples of common wealth here in Eastern Perthshire is the Cateran Trail. Our initiative has been totally inspired by its people, places and landscapes […]

The Perthshire poet Jim C Mackintosh (who you can read a bit more about here), wrote a poem this year especially for the Cateran Yomp called Griz An Cateran. The Yomp (a military term for a long-distance march) takes place every year around the Cateran Trail and is organised by The Soldiers Charity.   Jim waiting to go on […]

Andy Wightman, writer and researcher on land issues in Scotland and now an MSP for the Green Party gave a fascinating talk on the Commonty of Alyth Hill on the 28th April in Alyth.   As he has explained in his paper on the topic of his talk, “Commonties are areas of common land that were […]

Like many parts of Scotland, the Cateran Trail has a rich heritage of folktales, myths and legends. Glenshee takes its name from the Gaelic word sìth, signifying ‘fairies’. Until the old tongue died out in the late 1800’s the inhabitants were known as Sithichean a’ Ghlinnshith – ‘The Elves of Glenshee’.   Photo courtesy of Clare […]

Creative technologist Rory Gianni and writer and film maker Shona Main are working with Producer of The Story Box, Alyth resident Marian Bruce, to make her vision a reality. Together with old timers, young people and children from the town’s Primary School, they will transform a decommissioned red telephone box in the Town Square into […]

“In Deirdre’s projects, materials are inseparable from stories of their making; she makes narratives of matter, narratives that matter. Handheld stories that weave words and wool, that value knitting and narration as ways of living more fully and more carefully; stories that are threaded through our world to keep them from passing from our hands […]

In addition to being Councillor for Blairgowrie & the Glens and involved in a host of other organisations and projects that promote outdoor activities and sports, Bob Ellis has played a key role in the story of the Cateran Trail. In this post he told Clare Cooper how it all began and why it holds […]

Duncan McLaren and Kate Clayton are artists living in Blairgowrie. A writer and visual artist respectively, they are two of the 120 or so people and organisations who have identified themselves as working with arts and culture in the Cateran Trail locality during a recent mapping exercise and with whom the Cateran’s Common Wealth initiative […]

Blairgowrie, the largest town on the Cateran Trail, is the source of a great treasure of cultural ‘common wealth’ – The Laing Photographic Collection.   15,000 images taken between 1927 and 1993 from the business of D. Wilson Laing Photographers, Blairgowrie, was acquired by Perth Museum in 1997 and is the subject of an exhibition […]

We were lucky enough to have sustainable design luminary John Thackara visit with us in July to begin talking about how, with his help, we might use design thinking and design expertise to realise our ambitions for Cateran’s Common Wealth.   John Thackara with Marian Bruce, Sandra Wilson, Chris Lim and Andrew Barrie (and Hamish the […]