The Courthouse is one of 15 diverse Highland museums involved in the creation of a new innovative digital learning hub, called the Museum of the Highlands. Some 350 objects (35 from our museum) were chosen to explore themes, values, subjects and skills that teachers think are relevant to education today.

Over many months, we have been writing informative descriptions of the objects we submitted, as well as highlighting a variety of stories that deserve to be shared. Pictures were taken of all the objects by a professional photographer, who visited the Courthouse in November 2022. We also had a very positive response from Lord Carloway, the head of the judiciary in Scotland, who agreed to get involved in recording a series of videos for this project. He spent an afternoon in the museum in October 2022, talking about the various objects in the courtroom and the history of courts and justice, which has influenced the system we have today.

The website is offering new and exciting ways to delve into the history of the Scottish Highlands and as well as allowing users to discover the objects, it supports 200 free resources – including varied activities, games, reflection and debate to engage young people and their teachers with museum collections. We believe that this resource will have a wider audience and be of interest to many people from the Highlands and beyond.

A bonus for us is that the images and resources from our contribution are copyrighted to us and available for our own use elsewhere. This has been a great example of collaborative working and producing something that could not be done alone by a small independent museum. Museum of the Highlands can be found at: https://museumofthehighlands.org – go and explore….