Timespan Museum and Arts Centre (operated by the Helmsdale Heritage & Arts Society, HHAS) is located in the historic fishing village of Helmsdale on the northeast coast of Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands. Founded in 1986 as a small local heritage centre, Timespan has since evolved into an award-winning museum and the only public contemporary art gallery in Sutherland. The institution bridges heritage, art, and community, with an intersectional and multidisciplinary approach to culture. Timespan now welcomes on the order of 13,000–17,000 visitors annually (on-site and online), indicating its significant role as a cultural hub despite its remote setting. Its motto, “where the future meets the past,” and its current programming (e.g. an exhibition on “Beatrice: transition under petrocapitalism” addressing climate change) reflect a mission to “weaponise culture for social change” in alignment with Sustainable Development Goals.

Cultural Heritage Profile: Timespan’s collections and programs focus on the heritage of the Helmsdale area (parish of Kildonan) in its global context. The museum holds over 2,000 accessioned objects spanning archaeology, social history, art, and natural history. Key collection themes include Pictish and Iron Age archaeology (e.g. the 6th-century Borrobol Pictish stone), tools and material culture of the 19th-century fishing village, geological specimens, and archives of local stories. The museum is also known for its intangible heritage initiatives, using oral history, music, and storytelling to connect the local heritage with larger narratives. Timespan’s approach is holistic: it encompasses a traditional museum, an archive, a contemporary art gallery, plus outdoor features (herb garden, geology garden) and even a bakery/café, all integrated to serve a civic and political agenda of community engagement and global awareness. This profile makes Timespan an ideal demonstrator for how small, rural museums can leverage digital tools to amplify both local culture and pressing global themes like climate change and decolonisation.

Role in HERITALISE: As one of the project’s four demonstration sites, Timespan represents the use case of a community-based museum with diverse heritage assets (artefacts, buildings, landscapes, and oral histories). Within HERITALISE, Timespan’s pilot (designated “Use Case 2”) will explore how a small museum can employ cutting-edge digitisation and digital storytelling to address themes of climate action and decolonisation. Timespan’s new on-site “VR Room” – a digital exhibition space outfitted with virtual reality, gaming, and touchscreen systems – is a core asset for the project. This space allows Timespan to host immersive exhibits and to serve as a living lab for testing HERITALISE technologies (e.g. 3D visualization tools, augmented reality applications) in a real museum setting. The surrounding heritage landscape is equally crucial: Helmsdale’s vernacular fishing village architecture and multi-period archaeological sites in the nearby Strath of Kildonan provide an open-air extension of the museum (“museum without walls”). These tangible and intangible elements combined position Timespan as a demonstration of integrating heritage objects, places, and stories into a coherent digital narrative.