Gaelic boost expected as ministers meet in Skye for summer cabinet

ALEX Salmond has announced a £130,000 package to support Gaelic culture as he took his team of Cabinet ministers on the road to Skye this week.

• Ministers discussing 2012 Year of Culture celebrations expected to announce funding for Gaelic and Scots language project

• Cabinet to meet outside of Edinburgh for fifth summer in a row

The First Minister is holding a Cabinet meeting in Portree today and senior ministers will also face questions from members of the public in hustings session this afternoon.

Mr Salmond announced the government is to provide £100,000 to the National Library of Scotland to pilot a National Sound Archive for Scotland.

This will work together with Tobar an Dualchais, or Kist of Riches, a project that has been set up to preserve, digitise, catalogue and make available online several thousand hours of Gaelic and Scots recordings dating back more than 80 years.

An additional £30,000 is being made available to support the work of the Gaelic media service MG Alba, to encourage more young people to take part in Gaelic filmmaking through its annual FilmG project.

Mr Salmond said the funding announcement “demonstrates the Scottish Government’s strong commitment to growing the cultural economy, and supporting creative activity in every part of Scotland”.

The First Minister added: “Through its work to collect, preserve and provide access to more than 11,500 hours of Scotland’s sound heritage, Tobar an Dualchais has potential to play a key role in our long-term ambitions to create a National Sound Archive for Scotland.”

Donnie Munro, the chairman of Tobar an Dualchais, welcomed the funding as a “further and much-appreciated commitment by the Scottish Government to our national cultural heritage.”