The Salt Made Marks: Version 1

Film maker Rozi Peters worked with the #Shetland Crew of care experienced young people to make a film, which premiered in Shetland's art centre Mareel for an invited audience in 2019. Alongside the film was an exhibition (along with a second, updated version) in the final Home and Belonging exhibition in Shetland Museum and Archives in 2022, curated by Siun Carden and Roxane Permar.

The film was produced as part of the Home and Belonging project delivered in partnership with #shetlandcrew, UHI, Who Cares? Scotland and SIC. This work is supported with funding from the Life Changes Trust. The Trust is funded by The National Lottery Community Fund.

Rozi Peters wrote:
"The Salt Made Marks is an experimental film exploring the meaning of home and belonging with a group of care experienced young people from Shetland. Through extracts of conversations and lists of the multiple care placements the young people have experienced, the film reveals insights into their complex childhoods and how they are both defined and defiant in relation to them. The film visits areas of personal significance – a fire on the beach at a childhood home not visited since going into care, the twirling of a baton not picked up since the night a mother left the island, a description of the ferry system and the lighthouses there to protect them, as a metaphor for care. We see the young people’s present, joyful, relationship to the Island and their desire to cut loose from the hold that their histories have on them. Shot on HD video and 16mm film overlaid with direct animation techniques produced by the young people, the film nods to the film poems of Orkney based, avant-garde filmmaker Margaret Tait and acts as a reflection of the value of the young people themselves. Their beauty and their stories are captured on screen, reflecting their worth, their relevance and the necessity of their presence on this island."