When you think about ‘the family tree’ there’s is after all a logic in Forestry Commission Scotland teaming up with VisitScotland in this initiative. During Homecoming Scotland 2009 the agencies want to put together a gallery of photographs from people world-wide with Scottish ancestry.

Today’s Scots abroad may be descendants of those displaced in the Scottish diaspora or they may be more recent economic migrants – but their photographs will be the heart of the exhibition which will be displayed on the edge of Argyll. It will show at the David Marshall Lodge at Aberfoyle in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park. This includes a significant part of Argyll’s territory and the old Argyll Forest.

Forests are also central to the project. Forestry Commisskon Scotland will focus on photographs of those who worked in or lived in Scotland’s forests. And this is bound to include some startling curiosities. Remember that the people living on the treeless rocky islands of St Kilda out into the Atlantic, evacuated at thier own request in 1930, were relocated largely to work in the forests at Loch Aline in Morvern, then part of Argyll.

And since we’re into curiosities, there’s another Argyll link to St Kilda. In 1931 the St Kilda archipelago was sold to the Marquess of Bute, a keen ornithologist. He bequeathed the islands to The National Trust for Scotland in 1957.

Anyway, wherever you are in the world, if you have a family connection to Scotand, dig out your old photographs, scan them and email them to this project. The site and the project go live on 26th January 2009.