An £8m centre for Gaelic creative industries aimed at supplying talent and training to the new Gaelic digital channel is due to be opened by First Minister Alex Salmond on Skye today.
Fas - Gaelic for growth - is the latest addition to Skye's Gaelic College, Sabhal Mor Ostaig, and will provide a state-of-the-art creative/ media environment, including a full broadcast-standard digital television recording studio, sound-recording studio,theatre and post- production facilities.
Its backers said the new centre will enhance the college's international profile which is unmatched by other constituent colleges in the University of the Highlands and Islands network.
Crucially, it prepares SMO for the arrival of the Gaelic digital TV channel later this year and the attendant demands for training.
Mr Salmond said yesterday: "The new centre for creative and cultural industries at Sabhal Mor Ostaig has the potential to emerge as the birthplace of a whole host of new and exciting Gaelic cultural products and services."
Fas will also house a range of projects, including the National Centre for Migration Studies and Faclair na Gaidhlig - an inter-university project producing a historical dictionary of Scottish Gaelic comparable to the multi- volume resources already available for Scots and English.
There will also be incubation units for new business projects. One of the first tenants is Young Films set up by Chris Young in 1986 as his own independent feature film development and production company.
His work includes Venus Peter, Gregory's Two Girls and Festival for which he won a British Comedy Award and a UK Bafta nomination. Young also made Seachd: The Inaccessible Pinnacle - the first Scottish Gaelic film to be shown in commercial cinemas.
Today's ceremony will represent a personal milestone for Professor Norman Gillies who has been driving the college forward since 1983. He said: "This is an exciting and challenging time in the history of the language, with the advent of the new Gaelic digital channel and it is very much our hope that Fas will make a significant contribution to the future of this important new media sector."
Donnie Munro, formerly Runrig's lead singer but for the past 10 years the college's director of development, said: "Fas signals a major step forward for Sabhal Mor Ostaig as it develops the extent to which it can directly assist the economic and cultural opportunities offered by Gaelic," he said.
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