Rising employment and population levels which have fuelled an economic revival throughout most of the Highlands and Islands in the past 30 years can only be sustained if bold new moves are made, a conference in Inverness was told on Tuesday [25 September].

Jim Hunter, chairman of Highlands and Islands Enterprise, was speaking at a two-day event, called Inheritance and Creativity - Making Cultural Connections in the Highlands, in Eden Court Theatre.

Arguing that much of the region's economic and social success in recent years had its roots in a renewed sense of cultural identity, Dr Hunter said that further progress would result from placing an equal value on cultural traditions from other societies and welcoming a greater number of residents from overseas.

He also pledged support for the bid to make Inverness and the wider Highlands European Capital of Culture in 2008.

"I have absolutely no doubt that Highlands and Islands renewal - economic renewal, social renewal, cultural renewal - has a substantial cultural dimension," Dr Hunter said, citing the role played by a revival of interest in traditional language and arts which had paved the way for greater prosperity in areas as diverse as Shetland and Skye.

Greater support for Gaelic in particular had helped forge both cultural and economic growth.

"For generations, Gaelic was officially discriminated against - disparaged and belittled at every opportunity," he said, adding that this had in the past been one reason for the relative economic failure of Gaelic-speaking communities.

"After all, if you tell people, as Gaelic speakers were long told, that something as basic to them as their language is worthless, then you can't expect those same people to be other than lacking in self-confidence. And since to be deficient in self-confidence is to be deficient in one of the qualities central to business drive, it's hardly surprising that Gaelic-speaking localities were formerly characterised by exceptionally low levels of entrepreneurial activity.

"As with Shetlanders, so with Gaels and with Highlands and Islands people generally; once people begin to take some pride in their identity – once they start to feel good about themselves, their heritage, their background – they’re far more likely to get seriously to grips with the task of putting their communities on a sounder economic footing.

"Incidentally, there’s a lesson here, I feel, for urban Scotland. Until we stop marginalising the inhabitants of Sighthill, Castlemilk, Pilton, Wester Hailes, until we restore these folk’s pride in who they are and who they might be, then central belt housing schemes will continue to suffer from what our Highlands and Islands communities suffered from for centuries: a complete absence of any reason to think that things can be made better."

The Highlands and Islands, Dr Hunter argued, had broken out of what he called "that particular straitjacket" - and he stressed his belief that the area's ability to go much further was unlimited.

"We need to be bold, we need to be ambitious. That’s why it makes sense for us to aspire to make Inverness, together with the wider Highlands, Europe’s Capital of Culture."

Returning to a theme he has expressed before, Dr Hunter drew a comparison with the Pacific North West of the United States, arguing that the American region's assets such as spectacular scenery, natural environment, cultural vitality and high quality of life were also to be found in the Highlands and Islands.

"Thanks to the latest information and communications technologies - technologies which enable us to overcome the age-old barriers of distance and remoteness - we can have here a world-class economy.

"But there’s one more thing to be learned from America’s Pacific North West. Like the rest of the United States, it’s overwhelmingly an immigrant society. And we have to be an immigrant society as well.

"If the population of the HIE area were to double, this would still be the most thinly populated part of Europe outside Arctic Scandinavia.

"For all that we’ve had population growth of 20 per cent in 30 years, we still lack people. So low are unemployment rates in places like Lochaber that skills and labour shortages are becoming the biggest single constraint in the way of additional economic expansion.

"In principle, of course, the solution to this problem is readily available, in the shape of the so-called asylum seekers or economic migrants that our country, like most countries, seems determined to turn away.

"Already the Highlands and Islands are home to large numbers of people whose origins were elsewhere. Today this non-indigenous sector of our population is largely English. Tomorrow, as it were, this same sector of our people may be drawn from much further afield.

"So while it’s right that we place a proper value on those traditions which derive from our own past, it’s essential that we recognise the validity of other traditions also.

"From the Highlands and Islands, over the last 250 years, and for reasons we all know about, we’ve sent hundreds of thousands of people – economic migrants or asylum-seekers we’d now call them – all around the world. In the century ahead, if we’re to capitalise fully on the opportunities now available to us, we’ll have to do the opposite. We’ll have to make this the sort of place where folk of very diverse background are made to feel at home.

"A multicultural Highlands and Islands? Well, why not?"