Submitted by Bill Fernie
2nd October 2026
Wick has spent a lot of time talking about what has gone wrong.
The empty shops, the changing High Street, the loss of businesses and public-sector jobs, the arguments over parking and the difficulty of getting people to spend time in the town centre are all familiar territory. None of these problems is going to disappear simply because somebody produces another regeneration strategy.
But perhaps there is another question worth asking.
What would we do if we stopped concentrating for a moment on what Wick has lost and started thinking about what we could add?
One possibility would be to turn Wick into a town where there is actually something worth walking around to see.
Imagine arriving in Wick and finding a sign pointing towards a "Wick Sculpture and Heritage Trail". It would not be a collection of expensive statues dumped around the town simply because somebody had decided that public art was fashionable. The idea would be to create something gradually, over many years, which reflected the character and history of the town and gave visitors another reason to explore it.
Wick has plenty of stories to tell.
Its fishing industry, harbour, fishermen and fishwives, the Pulteneytown development, the river, the railway, engineering, the lighthouse, wartime history, Vikings and the people who have made their mark on the town all provide material. More recent history could be represented too, including the extraordinary scientific and engineering story associated with Dounreay and Caithness.
Those stories could become part of the physical landscape of the town.
A sculpture might commemorate the fishing industry. Another might reflect the sea or the harbour. A piece of local stone could celebrate Caithness itself. Something connected with Alexander Bain or another famous Wick figure could encourage people to discover who they were and what they achieved. Another work might be playful rather than historical, simply giving people something unusual to photograph.
The important thing is that it would not all have to happen at once.
That is perhaps the most attractive part of the idea. Wick does not need a £20 million sculpture project. It could start with one good piece, then another a year or two later, and another after that. Over ten or twenty years the town could gradually acquire a collection that becomes part of its identity.
And there is an interesting question about who should pay for it.
Philadelphia offers an example worth considering. Its Percent for Art programme was established in 1959, with a proportion of the cost of qualifying public construction projects allocated to public art. The principle was simple: when a city is investing in buildings and infrastructure, some of that investment can also be used to improve the environment around them.
There is no reason Wick would have to copy Philadelphia. In fact, it probably shouldn't.
But the principle could be adapted on a much smaller scale. Instead of one per cent, perhaps major developments in and around Wick could contribute 0.25 per cent of their construction value to a local public art and townscape fund.
On a £10 million development that would be £25,000. On a £50 million project it would be £125,000. A much larger development could make a correspondingly larger contribution.
The point would not be to make building in Wick more difficult or to burden small businesses and ordinary householders. It would be about asking whether some of the value created by major investment could leave something permanent behind for the town as well.
There is also an important difference between simply spending money on public art and creating something that becomes part of the town.
A sculpture placed somewhere and forgotten is not regeneration. But a carefully chosen piece that becomes a meeting point, a landmark, a photograph on social media or a reason for somebody to walk another 500 yards down the street is doing something rather different.
Do that repeatedly and the effect begins to accumulate.
The sculpture trail could also become part of a much bigger change in the way Wick looks and feels. Trees could be planted where appropriate. Seating could be improved. Empty or unattractive spaces could be given some purpose. The river could become more visible and accessible. Historic buildings could be brought back into use. Better signs could help visitors understand where they are and what they are looking at.
None of those things on its own will transform a town.
But towns are not transformed by one thing.
They change because hundreds of smaller decisions gradually alter the experience of being there.
That is why the sculpture idea is interesting. It is not really about statues. It is about whether Wick can start building an identity for the future rather than continually trying to recreate the town centre of the past.
We sometimes talk about visitors as though the only way to attract them is to build another major attraction. But a visitor does not necessarily need another indoor attraction costing millions of pounds. Sometimes they simply need a reason to get out of the car and walk.
A sculpture trail could provide one.
A visitor arriving in Wick might park, discover the first sculpture, follow the trail towards the harbour, stop for a coffee, find another piece of public art, wander towards the river and perhaps continue towards Pulteneytown. Along the way they encounter shops, cafés, buildings and history that they might otherwise have driven past.
The sculpture becomes the excuse to explore the town.
And it could work for local people too.
A good public artwork is not just for tourists. It becomes part of the place where people live. Children grow up knowing it. People use it as a landmark when giving directions. Visitors take photographs beside it. Eventually it becomes something that feels as though it has always belonged there.
That sense of ownership matters.
Wick does not need to pretend to be somewhere else. It does not need to copy Inverness, Edinburgh or some fashionable European tourist town. Its strength is precisely that it is Wick, with a remarkable history and a landscape that is quite different from most other Scottish towns.
Why not make more of that?
Local artists could be involved. Local schools could have a say. Historical groups could help identify stories worth telling. Local stone and other materials could be used. Competitions could be held for particular sites. Businesses could sponsor individual pieces if they wished, while the main fund remained publicly accountable.
There could even be an element of surprise.
Not everything needs to be solemn. A town with a fishing and maritime history could have something humorous. Children could help design something. A sculpture could interact with the landscape rather than simply sitting on a plinth. Temporary installations could appear alongside permanent works.
The aim should be to create the occasional moment when somebody walking through Wick says: "What's that?"
Because that is where curiosity begins.
And perhaps that is what regeneration sometimes misses. We concentrate so heavily on footfall figures, parking spaces, grants, business rates and property values that we forget that towns are places where people actually spend their lives.
People want attractive streets. They want somewhere to sit. They want trees. They want things to look at. They want to feel that somebody cares about the place.
None of this replaces the hard economic work needed to attract businesses, create jobs and bring empty buildings back into use. A sculpture will not solve Wick's economic problems.
But neither will another report saying that Wick has economic problems.
Perhaps the bigger challenge is to start building a town that people want to invest in because it has a sense of confidence about itself.
That is why a small contribution from major developments could be worth debating. If Wick is going to see significant construction and investment over the coming decades, why shouldn't a tiny proportion of that investment help create a better public environment?
It could perhaps be called the Wick Percent for the Future.
The money would be ring-fenced, transparently accounted for and spent locally, with the community having a meaningful say in what was created and where it went. The percentage could be debated. The threshold for developments could be debated. The whole idea could be debated.
But at least it would be a debate about creating something.
And perhaps that is the bigger point.
Wick does not have to wait for one enormous regeneration project to rescue it. It could begin improving itself piece by piece. Plant a tree. Improve a street. Restore a building. Create a place to sit. Tell a story. Put something interesting where there was previously nothing.
Then do it again.
Twenty years from now, nobody may remember which council meeting approved the first sculpture or which developer paid the first contribution. But people might notice that Wick has become a town where there are interesting things to see and places worth walking to.
They might even bring visitors specifically to show them.
That is a very different conversation from asking whether Wick is declining.
The question becomes: what could Wick become?
And perhaps one day, walking along the street, somebody will stop beside a piece of sculpture, look at it for a moment and ask the question that any good town should encourage its visitors to ask:
"What's the story behind that?"
Other Ideas
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