Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey

The show Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey tells this story in music, song, words and pictures of the islanders' emigration, its effect on the islands and how some of those who emigrated thrived but others sometimes did not thrive while trying to farm on poor soil!

Doors 7pm
Show Starts 7:30pm
Interval 8:30pm (approx)
Show over by 10pm

Metagama merchandise will be available for purchase.

In April 1923 the SS Metagama left Stornoway with over 300 young islanders onboard, bound for Canada. Within a year, nearly 1500 young people had left the Hebrides on the ships Marloch, Canada and Metagama. Coming on the back of WWI and the Iolaire disaster, this mass emigration would have a devastating impact on the Western Isles, still felt today.

This centenary concert celebrates the lives and stories of those emigrants, many of whom journeyed south to the USA, working in car factories and construction. Some returned home during the Great Depression, but many stayed to establish new lives in the New World.

An ensemble of acclaimed musicians and singers will carry you aboard the Metagama, a journey that will take you to the lakes and plains of Canada, to 1920s Detroit and Prohibition, through the ebb and flow of fortunes on both sides of the Atlantic.