West Highland Museum is one of the four demonstration centres for the Heritalise project. Situated in Fort William, Scotland, it was founded in 1922 and is one of the oldest museums in the Scottish Highlands. Although the region is sparsely populated, the area is popular with international tourists and the museum engages with over 60,000 visitors a year on-site and many more through its online engagement activities.
The museum’s collections span a wide range of local history subjects, from archaeology to modern industry, with a special emphasis on the Jacobite risings of the 18th century and Commando training in the area in World War II. Many of the items are rare and significant, including the Secret Portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie and a 19th-century beetle-wing dress. The Alexander Carmichael collection is an important collection of objects of Gaelic material culture and includes an eclectic range of objects and is an important reflection on the lost Gaelic culture of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
Since 2020 the museum has worked in partnership with the University of St Andrews’ Open Virtual History and Smart History teams to develop digitised resources for both its physical and online spaces. The WHM100 digital gallery at www.whm100.org was created during the Covid pandemic for the museum’s 100th anniversary. The project evolved into an online experience thanks to the support of the University of St Andrews team who developed an online gallery using images and metadata provided by museum staff. A multimedia approach was adopted for the project, with various digital assets created including photogrammetry for 3D models of objects, as well as video and audio components to enhance the experience. A digital museum has been established, emphasising significant artifacts within the museum’s collection. This approach offered richer content and enhanced the ways that online users engaged with the museum’s collections.
In December 2022, a virtual reality experience utilising gaming technology was added to the museum’s Jacobite Gallery. It depicts the fort at Fort William in 1746 during the Jacobite siege. This immersive experience has proven popular with school groups and families bringing younger audiences in touch with cultural heritage. It has encouraged local families who would not normally engage with cultural heritage, to visit the museum.
In 2024 the museum launched a new website to allow further access to its digitised collections. www.westhighlandmuseum.org.uk Online audiences from around the globe can access oral archives, digitised collections, blogs, podcasts, and explore the fort in 1746 using gaming technology. All these digital assets have enhanced audience engagement both in-gallery and on the museum’s website.
The Heritalise project is an opportunity for the West Highland Museum to comprehensively digitise its collections using standardised techniques, specifically focusing on its key Jacobite and Gaelic material culture collections. Digitisation of these objects will enable global audiences to access collections data. Use of innovative technologies such as 3D printing, 3D modelling, digital mapping, and AI will improve the user experience when they access collections.
There are further opportunities with the Heritalise project to protect the museum building, a 19th century former bank, by applying technology such as HHBIM to help us to map the building for preventative conservation purposes. In addition, through this user case the project can explore the digitisation of landscapes, buildings, art works and CH objects together with intangible heritage relating to the Gaelic culture of the Highlands and islands of Scotland. Visual and non-visual data for the collections will be ingested into the ECCCH and in this way made available to the museum to work with its collections.
Vanessa Martin
Curator
West Highland Museum
