Following on from our call out last month for a documentary filmmaker, John Wallace has been commissioned to make a short film documenting The Stove and 100 High Street, as we continue to gather pace towards the grand opening this year.
John’s proposal to explore the relationship of the building to the town as it is transformed into an arts space for Dumfries has led him in search of old images of what has previously been 92 – 102 High Street, Dumfries and needs your help!
The property at 96-102 High Street has been home to a game dealer, a fireman, several milliners, David Coltart drapers, Reid’s Shoes, millworkers and an umbrella maker. More recently it housed First and Seconds Ladieswear before becoming Happit.
But hours of trawling old photo collections and online research have revealed only a few scant glimpses, the best in a 1956 film of Guid Nychburris day.
A still from and old Lyceum picturehouse feature on Guid Nychburris 1956. Watch it online here
“The front of the building kinks away from the rest of the High Street by about 15 degrees,” explains filmmaker John Wallace. “So, in all your classic postcard views of the Midsteeple from the English Street end it can’t be seen at all, while in views from the Midsteeple it’s hidden by Burtons or the coffee house that was there before”.
Can you help? If you have any photos of the High Street which feature The Stove building, please do get in touch with John (details below.)
John is also keen to speak to people who have had a past connection to the building, were you a taxi driver when there was a rank outside the Stove? Have you worked or do you know anyone who worked in Reids, Coltarts, Happit or the First and Seconds? Did you live upstairs? If you have any stories or connections, please get in touch with John, either by phone 07720 710 934 or by email at [email protected]
Last November as part of the Dumfries Christmas Light’s Switch On, members of the Young Stove took on their first project, creating an interactive artwork on the High Street. Developing ideas for a less commercial, more natural Christmas, the group decided to gift live Christmas trees to those attending the Switch On in exchange for a Christmas wish of goodwill.
Report on the Young Stove Christmas Lights project by Young Stove member Michael Moore
Originally two worries I had about the project was “Would we have enough time for the event to be a big hit?” and “Would the public really get a feeling of the non-materialist Christmas?” I was happy to find I’d been worrying for no reason as within an hour and fifty minutes all the trees had been “re-homed” and the Glowing Gifts with their attached wishes were all sat ornately on and all around the stand.
Far from people simply saying something and getting a tree I found that the majority of people involved were both really interested in understanding how to get their tree to flourish and even struggled to choose of a thoughtful wish/hope. People really thinking about what they would give if they could was brilliant to see.
The only thing I was more impressed with than the public interest was my fellow Young Stove members. They were straight into interaction with the public from the get go and never showed a second of stress even when the public crowd gathered around our stand waiting keenly to see what the event was about. All of the members went into a fantastic operational mode where no “ordering” was needed. We all interacted with each other as equals and there could be no question of a lack of respect for anyone present that’s not just supposedly rare with young people, but also rare with people generally!
I’m impressed and happy to see all the work that was put into the project become a success but I’m happier still to be part of a group of creative and ambitious people working in a naturally co-operative autonomous way. It’s really great to see individual artists collaborating happily to create an event in bringing the community together even on a cold dark winters day.
I’m excited to see what we think of next and I’m (almost) hoping it’s nothing too easy to make happen as it seems its sometimes better to be overambitious!
To see the full set of photos from the event head to our Flickr page here
Dumfries, in common with most Scottish towns, has a particular lunch time snack – the toasted Panini. First referenced in a 16th Century Italian cookbook, Panino (which comes from the Italian pane meaning bread) is traditionally a grilled sandwich made with slices of porchetta, that is popular in Central Italy. Panini became trendy in Milanese bars called Paninoteche in the 1970s and 1980s, and then subsequently in New York. Paninaro came to mean a fashionable young person who was very image conscious.
Through the dominance of American fast food culture, Panini have become ubiquitous in Scotland, alongside white sliced bread toasties, and french baguettes. All of these breads are made from highly refined strong wheat flours which are very difficult to produce in Scotland. Due to our shorter growing season, the wheat grown here has a much lower protein content which is fine for baking but lacks the elastic gluten required for conventional bread making. Scotland’s most successful cereal crop is Barley, once used in almost every home to bake bannocks.
According to the NFUScotland, out of the 2 million tonnes of Scottish barley produced in 2013, 55% was used as animal feed, 35% went to Whisky malting, and only a small proportion was sold as pearl barley or milled as flour for us to eat.
Bere(pronounced ‘bear’) is a form of six-row barley which has been grown in Scotland for thousands of years. Bere is quite possibly Britain’s oldest cereal grain still in commercial cultivation and was likely to have been brought here by Viking settlers. It has adapted to growing in soils with low pH and in areas with long daylight hours which makes it particularly suited to Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles. It grows rapidly, being sown in the spring and harvested in the summer. Beremeal was one of the earliest flours to be used to make bannocks.
Robert Burns once described southern Scotland as a “land o’ cakes”. He didn’t mean desserts, but oatcakes and barley bannocks that would have been baked on an iron girdle over the fire.
“In Scotland, amongst the rural population generally, the girdle until recent times took the place of the oven, the bannock of the loaf.” F. Marian McNeil, 1929
In The Scots Kitchen, F. Marian McNeil suggests that the name bannok occurs in 1572, and derives from Latin panicum, probably through the influence of the Church. It may have referred originally to Communion bread.
Bannocks can range from soda breads, scones, or pancakes to a sweet fruity tea loaf in the case of the famous Selkirk bannock, but they usually have some barley meal in them. After testing numerous recipes, I think the best turned out to be F. Marian McNeil’s “Modern Method” using Beremeal from Barony Mills in Orkney (which is available through Greencity).
Bannocks o’ bear meal, Bannocks o’ barley,
Here’s to the Highlandman’s bannocks o’ barley.
Wha, in a brulzie, will first cry a parley?
Never the lads wi’ the bannocks o’ barley.
Bannocks o’ bear meal, Bannocks o’ barley,
Here’s to the Highlandman’s bannocks o’ barley.
Wha, in his wae days, were loyal to Charlie?
Wha but the lads wi’ the bannocks o’ barley!
Bannocks o’ bear meal, Bannocks o’ barley,
Here’s to the Highlandman’s bannocks o’ barley.
Robert Burns, 1794
“Back in October I got the chance to take part in Parking Space set up by the Stove and Sleeping Giants. Such a great weekend meeting all the people there, having a great time skating and filming and just soaking up the good times. The whole idea that every level you went down was a new event to watch and take part in really made it for me. Here’s some stills from a video in the works from the event I filmed with Mutual Motion.”
Watch Callum’s short film created as part of Parking Space here:
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Keep up with Callum and his film and photography work online:
Stove member Stan Bonnar shared with us his recent open letter to the Scottish Parliamentary Cross-Party group, on creating spaces and environments for thinking, discussing. How do we nurture culture? Stan used our AGM back in October as a stepping stone in his letter, and so we asked him if he would kindly let us share his letter on our blog.
For more on Stan, please have a look at his interesting flickr account here which includes an alternative artistic reading of his letter
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“i attended the agm of the stove artists collective in dumfries the other night. after all the formalities were over, they had organized a group discussion on public art, and this was facilitated by two groups – dot to dot active arts (blyth, northumberland) and the open jar collective (glasgow). also there were mark lyken and emma dove (who are currently artists in residence at the stove). this meeting of minds took place in an underground car park (closed to cars but not to skateboarders) and the various spaces of this dark cave were illuminated – some by moving images projected onto sheets, some by sculptural installations.
all these artists are actively and intimately involved with people. i would describe their art practice as mindful listening – cupped hands held open in places where people are – people fill the cup with all sorts of ideas and things. some of these leak away – filtered through fingers, but some remain for people and artist to see more clearly, and perhaps to make something of – a work of environmental art, of social art? but i also see the work of these artists as indicative of a greater search for cultural equanimity that started after the second world war. a continuing response by the individual to the excesses of technological globalization. but what drives such a human response – an ethical impulse – a quest for fairness?
human beings are naturally universal, by which i mean that our ideas and impulses are the very fabric of the universe. if the universe has a capacity to be unthinking, then so do we. if we are ethical and mindful, then the universe is ethical and mindful. we extend as the universe, and the universe extends as us – we are things like any other.
i will now try to take you on a trip into the universe as i understand it. i want us to consider the following quotation which is the current wikipedia definition of quantum entanglement: “Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated or interact in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently—instead, a quantum state may be given for the system as a whole.
“Measurements of physical properties such as position, momentum, spin, polarization, etc. performed on entangled particles are found to be appropriately correlated. For example, if a pair of particles is generated in such a way that their total spin is known to be zero, and one particle is found to have clockwise spin on a certain axis, then the spin of the other particle, measured on the same axis, will be found to be counterclockwise. Because of the nature of quantum measurement, however, this behavior gives rise to effects that can appear paradoxical: any measurement of a property of a particle can be seen as acting on that particle (e.g. by collapsing a number of superimposed states); and in the case of entangled particles, such action must be on the entangled system as a whole. It thus appears that one particle of an entangled pair “knows” what measurement has been performed on the other, and with what outcome, even though there is no known means for such information to be communicated between the particles, which at the time of measurement may be separated by arbitrarily large distances.”
for me, the phenomenon of quantum entanglement/measurement seems to show that the nature of things in space and time is very much comprehended from the point of view of something, like ourselves, who is entangled in the system. it’s not possible to become physically disentangled from a physical universe of space and time, especially if we ourselves are by our very comprehending, projecting the physical universe. so what is the universe really like beyond our comprehending of it?
for me, the phenomenon of quantum entanglement shows that the universe is the extension of pure singleness, throughout which we things project an infinite array of differently entangled realities of spacetime. the point is, that no matter where or when we look, we are looking at that thing with which we are entangled, which is ourself. we are our own differential comprehending of pure singleness.
i asked the question earlier concerning what drives the human ethical impulse – the quest for fairness to which social artists are compelled. the answer is clear that it is our pure singleness that drives such a quest. but how do things come into existence from pure singleness?
here is a representation of pure singleness…
…because of our nature as spatio-temporal things, this space is the closest we can get to actually describing pure singleness. for us it is the pure singleness of ‘space’ which has no property other than that it can extend for a ‘time’. as ‘things in space and time’ is how we comprehend our own pure singleness. but what constitutes a thing?
if singleness has the property that it can extend as our understanding (and then as the comprehending of that which we understand), then our ‘thinghood’ is the symmetrical extending of pure singleness. what i mean by this is simply that there can be no extension without that which is extended from. a thing is always a symmetrical alterity of otherness – that very system of a particle mentioned in the wikipedia definition of quantum entanglement. a thing is always the symmetry of otherness, and although i comprehend myself as an individual, i am actually nothing but my difference from you.
there is no ‘thing-in-itself’ as such. a thing is not for example the cat which strolls past me on the pavement on a sunny day. rather the thing is pure singleness extending as symmetry of the universe – nuances of which are the cat, the pavement, the sun and me. nuances which constitute the thinghood of the things that i comprehend.
but as i hinted earlier, comprehending is nothing more than our comprehensive grasping together of a basic understanding that we have with otherness. understanding-with is the sheer symmetrical extending of pure singleness as the alterity of otherness. understanding-with is the basis of the universe. the cat, the pavement, the sun and i are all nothing but our difference from each other, and we create and recreate each other in the
very moment of our understanding-with. this is the very spacing and temporalizing of pure singleness.
if i become conscious of the cat on the pavement, then for a few moments i will cultivate my understanding-with of the cat/pavement/sun/me thing. i might then nurture that initial cultivation by bending down to speak to the cat. if i then find that i am not only absorbed with this cat but with cats in general, i might join the cats protection league and be absorbed into a culture of cats and cat related things. in other words, i become ‘cultured’. the point is that there is no thing that is not cultured to some extent, and a thing that is cultured has been cultivated to be so. culture is the way of things.
if culture is the way of things, how best are we to nurture culture? by what means do we ackowledge the cultivation of things as cultures? do we simply celebrate cultural differences? of course we do, but this can be a hugely broad and insensitive brush stroke. rather, it is important to acknowledge the details of sophisticated cultural practice – literally for example, the manipulation of the nuts and bolts of a mechanics’ workplace.
many artists such as those whom i mentioned earlier, are deeply entangled with the cultures of others. they seek to interrogate, nurture and extend these cultures because they are very sensitive to the way of things. their work in these social contexts is at once public and intimately detailed. we might look on the scottish parliamentary cross party group on culture as a place where cultural things become entangled – but the ultimate purpose of such a group must also be to nurture the cultures of others. if it does not, then it runs the risk of becoming nothing more than a showcase for the arts establishment.
there is no limit what art is and where it can be found. at its most fundamental it is about the languages of cultural things and how they develop. the CPG on culture must be sensitive to artists working with ‘nuts and bolts’ and enable them to become entangled with MSP’s. both groups are working to nurture cultural things – but artists also nurture the languages of things.
all over scotland, MSP’s and artists occupy the same localities, and these are where new CPG working parties should be founded.”
It’s always good to start off the week with some good news, and as many of you may have heard across social media or the news over the weekend (check out The Herald here and a-n online here), The Stove has joined 118 other organisations in Creative Scotland’s National Portfolio for 2015-18.
Read our press release in full:
Dumfries’ The Stove Network has joined a prestigious list of just 119 arts organisation across the whole country who have been awarded National Portfolio status and a three year funding package.
The decision follows an open application process which saw 264 organisations apply to the national arts body Creative Scotland and now puts The Stove Network in such prestigious Company as Tramway in Glasgow and the Edinburgh International Festival.
Since the demise of DGArts in 2011 Dumfries and Galloway has had no nationally funded arts organisations. Wigtown Book Festival was also successful in their application for funding from 2015-18 alongside The Stove Network.
Local band The Barstow Bats playing at The Stove during the Dumfries Music Conference. Image: Colin Tennant
Janet Archer, Chief Executive Officer of Creative Scotland, said: “I am delighted to announce such a creatively rich and diverse portfolio of regularly funded organisations across Dumfries & Galloway. It represents some of Scotland’s most important, innovative and exciting cultural organisations, producing and presenting great work across literature and visual art.
“Importantly, these organisations will also provide significant support for individual artists and the broader workforce across the area’s creative sector.
“Following a clear and robust decision making process, I’m delighted that two organisations in Dumfries & Galloway are joining the portfolio of three-year regular funded organisations.
The Stove’s 135 members met recently for their Annual General Meeting in a temporary cinema created on Level Four of the NCP underground car park on Shakespeare St. Image: Galina Walls
Linda Mallett – member of The Stove Network curatorial team said: “This is a massive affirmation of our work from our national arts body – The Stove Network believes in partnership working and we hope that this award will go towards our programme of developing projects with the brilliant artists and groups locally, nationally and internationally.
“We have always taken a stance that we should be a means of drawing new resources into the region rather than placing another burden on precious funding locally – this award is all new outside money that we will be able to use for the benefit of the citizens of Dumfries.
Stove artist Katie Anderson helps some new recruits cast metal spoons with the group’s Mobile Metal Foundry at their Trading Journeys project for the Wigtown Book Festival. Image: Colin Hattersley
“This funding will allow us to carefully plan out a sustainable future for The Stove Network when the building works are complete at 100 High Street and bring something entirely new and exciting for the town centre and local people … the future is bright!”
