September & October Monthly Round-Up
What a whirlwind the past couple of months have been at the Shetland Amenity Trust. From welcoming school groups to hosting tours to launching exhibitions and delivering spooky Halloween events - it's been non-stop! We also had the excitement of Wool Week - always a highlight in the calendar.
Below are some of our favourite moments and memories from September and October. We hope you enjoy scrolling through the photos and getting a sense of what we’ve been up to across our sites and teams.
1. We had a special musical afternoon in the Boat Hall, where Alzheimer Scotland’s Friday choir filled the space with sea shanties — joined by young visiting sailors from Norway. A brilliant atmosphere and a lovely moment of shared heritage.
2. Our October holiday workshops returned, including the ever-popular trowie faace mask-making sessions.
3. Members of our learning team headed out to the Sandness Out of School Club, taking along artefacts from our collections and running net-mending demonstrations, giving young people a chance to get hands-on with heritage skills.
4. Our Junior Rangers were busy too, taking part in outdoor sessions focused on local woodlands and nature connection.
- Our Natural Heritage team shared peatland restoration updates at the Shetland Climate Festival
- At Sumburgh Head, we marked the end of the 2025 season with a final blast of the foghorn blast.
- We held a recording night at Waas History Group demonstrating the Shetland Place-Names Database, showing layers of place-names collected from group members and adding further names.
- we hosted a book launch for Kishies and Cuddies with Lois Walpole
Shetland Wool Week
Shetland Wool Week returned with energy, colour, and incredible international enthusiasm.
- The event opened with a fantastic celebration at Clickimin.
- Welcomed over 1,000 visitors from all over the world
- We created a Wool Week Hub in the museum - it buzzed with great conversations, new friendships, and shared inspiration throughout the week.
- We produced a beautiful range of SWW merchandise for the event.
- And there was huge excitement when we received the brand-new Shetland Wool Week Annual, hot off the press.
- A few members of our team getting a photo to share as part of SWW Fair Isle Friday
Our SWW heritage programme included tours of Old Scatness, Sumburgh Lighthouse, and even a visit to one of our peatland restoration sites — connecting textiles to landscape, history, and place.
As part of Helen Acklam’s Mootie’s Hoos exhibition, we hosted a series of children and adult workshops as well as student visits, creating space for conversations around art, archive, memory, and place.
We launched Flight, by Paul Bloomer in Da Gadderie, followed by a gallery tour and artist talk — find out more about the exhibition here.
We installed two further exhibitions:
- Heriot-Watt Degree Show
- Shetland Sheep Society – Tapestries & Woollens
Spooky Stories night full of eerie Shetland folklore.
A huge thank you to everyone who visited, supported, volunteered, or took part in any of our events.
