In 2026, Timespan marks its 40th year with a programme shaped by an ongoing commitment to becoming an institution of the commons. Across contemporary art, heritage, public programmes, and community work, culture is approached as a shared civic resource and as a tool for critical enquiry. Thinking through the commons allows us to work with complexity rather than smooth it over, and to question how narratives are formed, whose voices are heard, and what remains unseen.
Timespan’s 2026 programme responds to the turbulence of the present moment by focusing on land as a site of power and extraction, the conditions of migrant and seasonal labour in Scotland and beyond, and the legacies of Empire and colonialism, including questions of historical responsibility and repair. These concerns are closely linked to the extractive logics driving the climate crisis. Together, they are approached as interconnected processes shaping how place, power, and belonging are lived and understood.
The 2026 programme develops through research, exhibitions, community-led projects, youth work, publishing, and public gatherings. Some strands unfold across the whole year, while others mark key moments. Together, they form a connected programme rooted in Helmsdale and the North Highlands, and in dialogue with wider global conditions.
Until it Yields
José García Oliva
29/03/26 – 12/07/26
Opening: 28/03/26
The first solo exhibition in Scotland by Venezuelan artist José García Oliva, Until It Yields presents a new body of work examining mechanisms of agricultural and labour extraction sustained by overseas seasonal worker schemes and land exploitation, operating within systems of deferred responsibility.
This framework is set in contrast to romanticised notions of the rural landscape as an idyllic and picturesque paradise of pastoral abundance. This work emerges from conversations, gatherings, and drawings developed in collaboration with agricultural workers supported by the Worker Support Centre and the Justice Is Not Seasonal campaign.
Baile/Baile x Timespan
28/03/26
To mark the opening of José García Oliva’s exhibition, we’re launching the first event of the Baile/Baile x Timespan collaboration.
Baile/Baile, meaning dance in Spanish and village in Gaelic, is Scotland’s most remote club night, co-founded by Sigi Whittle and Jemima Fasakin in Ullapool. It comes to Helmsdale for a one off rural club night bringing music, movement, and collective joy to Timespan. More information and tickets coming soon.
Summer Solstice Festival
19/06/26 – 21/06/26
The Summer Solstice Festival forms part of the public programme for José García Oliva’s exhibition Until It Yields. Drawing directly from the artist’s research into migrant and precarious labour, land exploitation, and systems of extraction, the festival explores how these conditions shape rural life today.
Across talks, workshops, performances, and collective moments, the programme will foreground lived experience, shared enquiry, and embodied knowledge, creating space to think together about labour, land, and responsibility beyond representation.
Taking place over the solstice weekend, the festival will also mark Timespan’s 40th anniversary, bringing celebration and critical reflection together at a moment of seasonal and institutional turning.
Decolonising The Highlands
Curated by Dr Cat Dunn
With Alberta Whittle, Graham Fagen, Matthew Arthur Williams, and Tilda Williams Kelly
02/08/26 – 01/03/27
Opening: 01/08/26
Decolonising the Highlands is a research-led exhibition curated by Dr Cat Dunn, examining Scotland’s role in Empire, specifically its deep-rooted but often overlooked entanglements with the Caribbean, and the complex legacies of displacement, racial capitalism, and historical erasure that continue to shape both places today.
Scotland’s extensive participation in the transatlantic slave economy and the management of Caribbean colonies has been marginalised within mainstream historical discourse. Wealth generated from sugar plantations, enslavement, and colonial administration flowed back into Scottish society, funding universities, landholdings, and cultural institutions.
The exhibition is accompanied by a public programme curated by Dr Cat Dunn, beginning with an anchor event designed to ground the research locally, centre community dialogue, and build critical context ahead of the exhibition opening. This event marks the start of a longer process of collective enquiry.
30 January, 7pm
Screening of The Slave’s Lament by Graham Fagen
Followed by a Q&A with the artist and curator Dr Cat Dunn
Opening in August 2026, the exhibition will feature work by Alberta Whittle, Graham Fagen, Matthew Arthur Williams, and Tilda Williams Kelly. Working across video, performance, installation, photography, and sculpture, the artists offer ways of seeing that disrupt official histories and invite more nuanced, embodied understandings of place and power.
People’s Mobile Archive
The award-winning People’s Mobile Archive (PMA) returns in early February, continuing its work addressing rural isolation, health inequalities, and cultural exclusion.
The 2026 programme includes community cinema screenings, a climate justice reading group, collection conversations, and sessions focused on imagining homemade and sustainable futures. The PMA builds on national recognition from the Museums Association in 2025 for its innovative use of collections and intangible heritage to support community wellbeing and decolonising museum practice.
The 2026 phase launches alongside the new community publication People and the Sea, featuring contemporary poetry and archival images of herring gutters, seine net queens, and fishermen.
Youth Programme
In 2026, Timespan will broadcast Climate Conversations, a podcast developed in collaboration with Helmsdale Primary School. The series brings young people into conversation with local practitioners working across sustainability, environment, and climate in the North Highlands, and is informed by principles of radical pedagogy and collective learning.
A new youth programme will also launch in Spring 2026, extending this work through participatory learning, creative exchange, and experimental educational approaches. Recruitment for two new roles, a Youth Curator and a Youth Assistant, will be announced soon. Please keep an eye on Timespan’s channels for further updates.
Friends of Timespan
Our incredible volunteers, Friends of Timespan, have lined up some great community gatherings. Keep an eye out for the annual Fashion Show, Duck Race, Quiz Nights and much more.
Kar
Alex Sarkisian
Until 01/03/26
Don’t forget to catch our current gallery exhibition, kar by Alex Sarkisian, on until Sunday 1st March. Following the artist and their father on a return to Kharpert, their ancestral home, visited for the first time since the Armenian Genocide, kar traces the delicate survival of Western Armenian ancestral places.
Heritalise
Alongside its exhibitions and public programmes, Timespan continues its international research work through HERITALISE, a multi year Horizon Europe project exploring the future of digital heritage. As a pilot partner, Timespan collaborates with researchers, artists, and cultural organisations across Europe to develop new digital tools for preserving, interpreting, and sharing cultural heritage.
Embedded within the 2026 programme, HERITALISE extends Timespan’s commitment to heritage as a living, collective resource, connecting global digital research with local histories, landscapes, and communities in the North Highlands. The project strengthens our work around climate justice, decolonisation, and civic responsibility, positioning digital heritage as a key part of how we imagine shared futures.
Timespan Redevelopment
Alongside the 2026 programme, Timespan continues work on the long term redevelopment of its building. The project is rooted in our commitment to becoming an institution of the commons, rethinking the museum as an accessible, sustainable civic space that supports art, heritage, learning, and community life. The redevelopment is being developed with architects Assemble and Office Corr Higgins as a careful, phased process, shaped by environmental responsibility, accessibility, and the needs of our local communities. It reflects Timespan’s holistic approach, bringing together culture, wellbeing, and care, and ensuring the building can support the organisation’s work for decades to come.