Jan de Groot - Taigh Iain Ghròt - John O'Groat. Are We There Yet?

Fraser Gray, Martin Mcguiness, Skint Richie and Mike Inglis alongside organisers Dufi will be scaring sheep in our most northern town very shortly.

From The Gruniad

It has been derided as one of the UK's greatest carbuncles, a "dismal" and "motley" tourist trap famous for being the most northerly settlement on mainland Britain and a launching point for countless charity walks.

But now the windswept and desolate resort at John O'Groats on the northern coast of Scotland is to have an unlikely makeover, by a group of professional street artists armed with spraypaints, giant graphic art posters and a vast, three-dimensional Rubik's cube.
A long-awaited £15m redevelopment of the resort, coastal paths and harbour is finally getting under way and as part of it a street art company based near Inverness has been given a derelict hotel to play with.
The redevelopment of John O'Groats House hotel will be the largest event in an arts weekend in early July commissioned by the regional development agency Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), when storytellers, ceramic artists and sculptors will "transform" the resort to mark the start of the modernisation programme.
This autumn, as part of the first phase of redevelopment costing £6m run by the tourism company Heritage GB, the hotel and outlying chalets will be converted into self-catering residences by the firm Natural Retreats, which specialises in self-catering centres in England's national parks. The owners of the nearby Seaview hotel and Caberfeidh restaurant have raised £580,000 to upgrade their tourist facilities.
Carol Gunn, the project director for HIE overseeing the John O'Groats redevelopment, said: "What we're trying to do is a paradigm shift for John O'Groats; for more than 10 years there has been a lack of investment and a lack of co-ordination and a lack of planning. People want things to happen. There's a large 'staycation' market and we're looking to capitalise on that. We're one of the last wilderness areas, which is easily accessible and we have a fantastic coastline; John O'Groats is the location associated with these areas."
Street artists will transform John O'Groats House - and the views of the village - by using the rambling building as a huge canvas.
Fin Macrae, from Dufi, the street art company working on the hotel, said their project was inspired by the village's long decline, its status as a landmark for tourists travelling across the northern Highlands and the starting point for charity walkers heading to Land's End in Cornwall, a group collectively known as "End to Enders".
It will be called "Are we nearly there yet?", he said, and would combine nostalgia for childhood holidays with a celebration of modern graphic and street art.
For many locals, the art project is timely and the redevelopment long overdue. Last year John O'Groats was awarded the annual Carbuncle award - a trophy known as the "plook on a plinth" - by the architecture magazine Urban Realm for the most dismal and depressing townscape in Scotland.
John O'Groats' reputation has suffered from its slow decline: its mirror resort 874 miles south at the furthest tip of the UK in Cornwall, Lands End, has also had a mixed reputation but its privately-owned complex boasts a museum, shops and "4D" cinema which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.


Mark