When I moved from Yorkshire to the Highlands of Scotland in 1989, initially to a little village called Hilton, on the Nigg Peninsula, I loved the peace after years of driving up and down the English motorways.

I was lucky enough to be handed a couple of schools projects, and, in time, this led to my present part-time job as an arts worker for the Highland Council in Ross and Cromarty. This has thrown up some exciting opportunities.

For example, I've organised one-day harp-making workshops, got a Sacred Harp singing group together, and produced the music for a number of dramatic events. In 1994 I wrote and directed the music for a huge outdoor production based on the real Macbeth (rather than Shakespeare's). It was exciting and hair-raising, because each week at rehearsals a new musician would turn up. We started with three and ended up with 27, including half a dozen singers, a viola player, several violins, a French horn and four teeneage electric guitarists chugging away at the back.

The following year saw a community production of my music-drama Storm, based on the famous story of the Selkie Wife. It was staged in Cromarty, a sell-out every night. For me the highlight was the trip home on the Nigg ferry each evening, after a leisurely pint in Cromarty's Royal Hotel. In 1995 I also recorded, produced and arranged, with singers Ellen Jack and Donald MacAskill the recording of Gaelic nursery songs, Am Bodach Beag, which is used by playgroups all over the world.

In 1996, the Highland Council put out Breaking the Silence: Music Inspired by the Picts, a collaboration with harper Bill Taylor, and Henry Fosbrooke, who makes and plays his own drums; and in the same year Rhiannon Records put out The Last Wolf, a CD of my songs recorded with Highland-based musicians.

Until the very end of 2007 I was running The Merry Dancers Storytelling Project, which has brought together storytelling with other art forms, linked schools with their communities, and issued recordings of traditional storytellers. In 2004 an animation made with first year art students from Tain Academy, as part of the project, won an engageScotland Art in Education award. The animation is called The Gizzen Briggs. You can watch it on YouTube, together with The Gengy Fearless, another short film made during the Merry Dancers project.

Recording projects from around this time included From Sea to Sea, a compilation of songs, music, stories and memories, and readings about the Caledonian Canal, and a CD of lullabies with Highland singer Chrissie Stewart. This was very well-received, and Chrissie and I have now made another CD, A Bairn's Kist, along with harper Bill Taylor and fiddler Olivia Ross. In November 2007 the Forestry Commission released Between Two Worlds, a CD of my stories and music which accompanied a two-week sound and light installation in Glenmore in the Cairngorms, for which I created the onsite music.

The schools show Roots and Flutes has been steadily touring, and I've been doing more and more storytelling, particularly in Scotland, both in schools and festivals. In 2003 my show The Last Wolf: and Other Stories - traditional tales and original songs about wolves - was launched at the Bleddfa Arts Centre in Powys and featured in the International Storytelling Festival in Edinburgh, as well as receiving Highland airings in Tain, Ardross, Portmahomack, the Findhorn Foundation, and Groam House Pictish Museum in Rosemarkie (see the website www.lastwolf.net).

In the summer of 2004, I was invited to Iceland to do some storytelling harper Heather Yule, and with Orkney's Tom Muir and Lawrence Tulloch from Shetland, two of the finest Northern tale-men. I've also done some "prehistoric" storytelling, with music, around the Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in Kilmartin Glen in Argyll.

An enormous pleasure was to be able to launch Out of the Stones, a CD made for Orkney Islands Council, in Kirkwall's St Magnus Cathedral in late 2005. Bill Taylor and James Ross were with me, as well as children from Papdale School, and it was wonderful to be able to tell the story of How the Sea became Salt with the children joining in, and to hear Bill and James perform the famous Hymn to St Magnus with just a harp and solo voice, close to the pillar where the bones of Magnus himself are still interred.In the summer of 2005 I also directed the community play in Banchory, played to a packed house in the historic Mull Theatre, and led storywalks in Glen Nevis, Beinn Eighe, Ardgay oakwoods, and other beautiful places.

Highlights of 2006 were a return to Kilmartin, and work during the summer telling stories for Historic Scotland at Bonawe Iron Furnace in Argyll. I returned to the Whitby Folk Festival after a couple of years' break, and the same year also saw the re-release of my 1970s Transatlantic recordings on Bob Pegg: Keeper of the Fire. At the close of the year I was commissioned by Radio 3's The Verb to write a new song for the Dark Months.

2007, the Highland Year of Culture, was a busy time, particularly for work in Highland schools. My storytelling residency in Huntly culminated with the publication of Secret Doorways, Strange Worlds, a guided storywalk through the town. This led to a commission for a Riddling Storywalk for the Highland Folk Museum, later in the year. I had a great time visiting Andy Ross's Wind Dog Cafe in Yell, Shetland, in May, to tell stories with my old friend Lawrence Tulloch, and finally completed soundtrack work for the animation project with Timespan Museum in Helmsdale. The rolling community project A Tale Gathering, with Artsplay Highland, began in Glenurquhart, and continued in the Dingwall area, and one of the highlights of the year was working to write and record the music and CD for the Glenmore project mentioned above.

During 2008 I worked with artist Joanne Kaar to make books with children from Crown Primary School in Inverness, based on childhood memories of residents in a nearby retirement home; and with speech therapist Maggie Wallis to celebrate the remarkable lives of individuals who have Parkinson's disease. My show The People of the Sea, inspired by David Thomson’s book of the same title, had its Edinburgh premiere in the Scottish Storytelling Centre. The Viking show, Rognvald’s Journey, with Bill Taylor and Tom Muir, toured Orkney and was a sellout at the Edinburgh International Storytelling Festival; and in the Autumn I had a great time with Mary and Rosie Walters in Kaimes School in Edinburgh, originating and recording "woodland" stories for animations, as part of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh's Wych Elm Project.

2009 has included work for SNH telling stories on the Ullapool-Lewis ferry (with Alisdair Darling in the audience), a visit to Shetland with Rognvald’s Journey for the Johnsmas Foy Midsummer Festival, and leading workshops for the Scottish Storytelling Centre. I’ve been back to Kilmartin House to explore the notion of prehistoric music with schools parties, and had an illuminating time telling stories in a tepee at the Lochaline Games. For the Year of Homecoming Gathering I was down in Edinburgh telling stories on a giant map of Scotland for Forest Heritage, who have also commissioned a story and song show Come Listen to the Crofters, which singer Chrissie Stewart and I will be presenting in Argyll, Ullapool, Dunbeath, Inverness, Rosehall, Boat of Garten and the Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. My show about the Orcadian John Rae, the 19th century Arctic explorer who discovered the North West Passage, will be premiered on 25th October at the Edinburgh International Storytelling Festival. Mairi MacArthur and I have been doing a lot of work with Alec Williamson, the last of the old style Highland Traveller storytellers, recording and filming him for a book/movie project; and I’ve been recording World War II veterans for the Their Past Your Future Museum Galleries Scotland initiative.