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Paper short abstract

Walking interviews and a storytelling workshop at the Calanais megalithic sites show how engagement with heritage and landscape fosters meaning, belonging, creativity, and life purpose, then further amplified through digital and hands-on tools for ecological and cultural intimacy.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how the Calanais megalithic sites in Scotland foster identity through encounters with nature and cultural heritage. Drawing on ethnographic walking interviews and a storytelling workshop conducted as part of the INT-ACT project, we explore how these ancient landscapes—deeply embedded in their natural surroundings—function as spaces of healing, present-moment awareness, ecological attunement, and belonging. Participants describe experiences of inspiration, creativity, and life purpose emerging from engagement with the standing stones and their surrounding environment, highlighting the relational entanglements between people, place, and the more-than-human world.

We also consider digital and hands-on tools developed as part of INT-ACT's off-site installation, including an interactive demonstrator, which extends the intangible cultural heritage of these experiences to others and offers new forms of ecological and heritage intimacy. By integrating empirical insights with a theoretical lens on storytelling, sensory experience, and heritage as dynamic relational spaces, this paper contributes to understanding how tangible and intangible heritage practices support personal meaning-making, creativity, and continuity. The Calanais sites illustrate how heritage encounters—both in-person and mediated—cultivate belonging, imagination, and life purpose in contemporary environmental and societal contexts.