Green light for Dunnet improvements

Whale skull bone and radar gull waves among features

FOLLOWING a successful and well attended public drop-in session and exhibition at the Britannia Hall in Dunnet, the Highland Council has decided that the environmental improvements works at Dunnet Beach and Dunnet Head, including the proposed sculptures, should go ahead.
Approximately 100 people attended the event, on the 18th of February, to see the proposals and to make their views known. The Planning and Development Service sought the public’s opinions on sketch designs for the sculptures and comment cards were available for detailed comments. 74 people filled in comment cards on the day.
After staff read and analysed the comment cards and results, the Landward Caithness Ward Councillors were consulted and the Council agreed that the project should go forward with the most popular sculpture options.
The sculpture selected for Dunnet Bay is, Helen Michie’s ‘Whale Skull Bone’. The sculpture will represent the shape of the bones of a Minke whale skull and be made with a metal framework inside a carved dense polystyrene material which is then coated in glass reinforced concrete. Glass mosaic tiles will then be applied to create the images of an Atlantic White-sided Dolphin, a Short Beaked Common Dolphin and Fin Whale.
At Dunnet Head the sculpture will be David Annand’s Radar Gull Waves. This will be a 3m steel sculpture which references a radar screen while introducing semi abstract elements to echo the waves in the sea and the wings of a seagull. They would appear to run through the screen and out into the foreground giving more, three dimensionally, to the sculpture. Appropriate words, gleaned from the local community or a poet, could be digitally bead blasted onto the sculpture.
Detailed design on the sculptures and environmental works will now proceed. In recognition of responses received through the consultation, there will also be additional opportunity for the community to be involved in shaping the development of the sculptures. Details of these have still to be arranged and will be announced at a later date.
The sculpture project is part of the Planning and Development Service’s £100,000 upgrade of the existing visitor facilities at Dunnet Beach and Dunnet Head.