Stories create our inner landscape. We are moulded by the place where we live or grew up, but it is the stories we tell ourselves about place, which live deep within us.

Today I am in Shetland, a place I long associated with my mother’s knitted jumpers and vests. More lately, I associate Shetland with the haunting music of John Lunn and the flawed, very loveable character of Inspector Jimmy Perez in the BBC series Shetland which is primarily set in Lerwick on the main island.

I discovered something of the history of the lodberries, the iconic buildings one of which is where Jimmy Perez lived. These are stone buildings which jut out into the sea, built some 200 years ago, reminding me that the history of Lerwick is of commerce and trading which brought wealth to the merchants on the island.

As I walked along those streets following in Jimmy’s footsteps, the same rain shimmering on wet concrete, shops and houses, I felt like I was a character in the series. Which character I did’t know, but that show brought the town to life for me. The place is full of stories, but these too are relative to who is the storyteller.

An exhibition I saw in the Shetland Museum and Archives was about all about different narratives of place, story and identity. Tending the Light: Festival of Care included several projects, including Home & Belonging, Projectiles and The Salt Marks Us. Projectiles documents a series of light projections using curated texts which were projected onto seven buildings around Lerwick and grew out of the experience of lockdown.

Home & Belonging was about the feelings of ‘care experienced’ young people who reflected on what it means to be 'at home’ in public, private and community spaces. The Salt Marks Us is a compilation film of these young people set against the Shetland Island background. Their stories of survival and resilience were interspersed with mythological and magical stories retold to provide strength and hope for the future.

Our own stories are so important and we can always choose to change the narrative about what place and events mean to us. How they shape us, how we learn from them and how we can express ourselves with words of hope to help us through each day.