Celebrating UHI progress across five languages

FIVE languages will be used to welcome guests to an event this week celebrating the University for the Highlands and Islands.

School pupils at the event in Inverness will give addresses to 800 people in English, Gaelic, Scots, Shetlandic and Orcadian.

UHI was granted a university title in February and now has more than 8,000 students in a network of 13 institutions from Shetland to Argyll.

Thursday’s event will include an academic robing ceremony and the presentation of the institution’s new mace, gifted by the universities of Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Strathclyde.

Academic and poet Dr Meg Bateman, who lectures at the Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic college in Skye, will read a poem she has written for the occasion, and music composed by students from the Benbecula campus of Lews Castle College in Stornoway will be played.

After the ceremony, an 85-strong procession will make its way to the Town House for a civic reception, headed by the Royal British Legion Scotland Inverness Pipes and Drums.

Jets from RAF Lossiemouth will perform a flypast of all the university campuses across the region, and the procession.