In September 2024, as part of our Conversing Building project, we invited artist and Stove member Emily Tough to create an artist’s book celebrating moments of everyday life. Read Emily’s account of the project below.
The Stove Network’s Conversing Building is an ongoing project, supporting creative dialogues whilst activating spaces in and around The Stove building on Dumfries High Street.
My response was quite a literal one, to involve and document the surrounding shops, shop keepers, people, and everyday moments. These drawings were taken on site, mostly throughout July and August ‘24, to start building up an illustrative impression of our high street. I think it’s important that we consider ourselves as part of a whole, and it’s all these people and interactions which make up a town centre.
In my opinion, it’s the shop keepers who are the custodians of the place. Who generate the want for people to come into the town, who manage the upkeep of the buildings, and who also create their own communities. Keeping an eye on their regulars through the ‘how are you?’(s) which are given over the counter.
I’ve had such a wonderful time getting to know people and the town centre through these drawings. Really enjoying the little moments, such as Eddy helping his friend go to the bank several times in a row. Or watching Leah at Flourish discuss community asset transfer with a visitor from Aberdeen.
I’ve really appreciated the opportunity to show work in such a busy, used space, as is the Stove Cafe. I’ve had a lot of people this past month tell me they’ve seen and enjoyed my work. It’s been useful to have a friend who works in the cafe, who also features in the publication, as she’s given me little updates on the interactions people have had with it.
I’ve had a few people ask me for postcards of some of these Dumfries views. It’s something I’ll look into, and hopefully have the chance to go out with my sketch book and record more of our town.
I hope people have enjoyed seeing themselves, or people and places they know, in these drawings.
Thank you to Katie Anderson at The Stove Network for this wonderful commission & to the kind people who let me draw them.
Conversing Building is an ongoing project, supporting creative dialogues whilst activating spaces in and around The Stove building on Dumfries High Street. Conversing Building began in 2017 and is supported by The Stove’s Public Art lead. The project invites local groups, artists, and collectives to share displays, exhibitions, activities, and interactive artworks within the Stove’s public spaces – including The Stove Cafe, stairwells, and exterior walls and spaces.
Travelling Gallery, a contemporary art gallery on a bus, is back, bringing its third season to Dumfries and Galloway this October.
The Gallery will visit three sites across the region, featuring Repair Café, a 16 mm film by Scottish artist and filmmaker Helen McCrorie. The film was co-created with the residents of Strathearn in Perthshire as part of the Scotland-wide Remembering Together project, which aimed to bring ‘collective acts of reflection, remembrance, hope and healing to communities across Scotland’ in the years following the COVID pandemic.
When asked about McCrories’s exhibition, Edinburgh Council Culture and Community Convener Val Walker said, “[The exhibition] promises to be an insightful exhibition that will inspire us all to reflect on the inequalities that were compounded by the pandemic, and the different ways we made our way through with creativity and connection.
In partnership with the What We Do Now Network and The Stove, they will be visiting:
Tuesday 22nd October: The Crannog Campus, Castle Douglas DG7 1EU – open 10 am – 4 pm – supported by Castle Douglas Development Forum
Wednesday 23rd October: First Edition Car Park, Eastriggs DG12 6PA – open 10 am – 4 pm – supported by Eastriggs Community Group
Thursday 24th October: Tesco, Annan DG12 6JH – open 10 am – 4 pm – supported by Annan the History Town
The film engaged people of all ages through creative workshops, asking them to recall what helped them both during the pandemic and beyond. It weaves hand-drawn animation and footage of beloved community spaces with oral histories and evocative music by local school pupils and musicians. The soundtrack features a special arrangement of the song Strathearn by Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne of Strathearn, a contemporary of Robert Burns.
Exhibited alongside the film are a number of additional works that reveal some of the processes and thinking behind its making, including an interactive display with 16mm film reels, a colourful abstract animation and an atmospheric sound work.
McCrorie has also collaborated with Glasgow-based illustrator Annabel Wright to produce several drawings that bring to light more of the personal stories shared during the project: some sad, scary, or poignant, some hopeful, funny, or surreal. The work expands further upon the spectrum of insights and experiences from this time.
WWDN Digital works with community groups and organisations to set up and run digital spaces, host collaborative programmes, and create shared online resources to increase communities’ access to technology and training in digital media skills. As part of its launch, The Stove Network hosted Off the Margin, a micro-festival celebrating Dumfries’ print heritage.
In this age of digital media outlets and information sharing, Off the Margin delved into the print heritage of Dumfries and investigative journalism more broadly.
As part of this programme, The Stove’s Artistic Director Martin O’Neill sat down for an insightful discussion with a panel of speakers whose expertise ranged from the history of investigative journalism to Riso printing techniques and working in the former news and print spaces of Dumfries’ high street.
While examining the current landscape in Scottish grassroots print and journalism, the panel tackled how communities, creatives, and journalists can reclaim their agency while navigating an era marked by an increasingly divided mass media and heightened public scrutiny regarding the accuracy and biases of printed media. This discussion revealed insights and sparked a hopeful community discussion on the potential future of print, media, and journalism in Dumfries and Galloway.
The discussion directly followed a screening of film-work Imprints in Time by Artist John Wallace, documenting the master printmakers and enduring machinery still in use at Solway Print while uncovering the printing heritage of Dumfries town centre.
Each panellist brought unique and specialised knowledge into the discussion. Hewitt shared her expertise on the unique history of early print protest, bringing to life Doonhamers’ struggles and lived experiences in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. From historical accounts of the Kings Arms (now Boots) to outlining how individuals used print to protest food inequalities, Hewitt brought with her a wealth of knowledge that leaves you returning for more. Out with the panel, she oversaw the exhibition ‘Fighting for Justice: Strikes and Protests in Dumfries 1770-1920’ as part of the Off the Margin period.
Gailey brought over a decade of experience in printmaking and youth engagement to the conversation, underlining the importance of teaching young people this skill and providing them with the means and opportunities to grow their confidence and creativity. At Out of the Blueprint, the eco-studio he co-manages in Leith, Edinburgh, he specialises in Japanese printing techniques such as RISO, GOCCO, and provides mentorships for young artists. They offer affordable, sustainable, and ethical print services for the local community and reinvest all profits to support young people through residencies, publishing support, training, and education initiatives.
Goodwin works as a journalist and a co-editor for The Ferret, a media co-op where she reports extensively on social affairs and health inequalities. While on the panel, she highlighted the importance of community-owned news for tackling media bias and misinformation. Outside The Ferret Goodwin has written for many Scottish and UK broadsheets, magazines, and online platforms, including the Sunday Times and the Guardian, reported for BBC Scotland’s Disclosure, and has worked on other radio and film projects. She is currently writing and co-hosting the podcast ‘Sheku Bayoh: The Inquiry’.
Fortune’s working life began in the printers of Dumfries, having grown up in a golden thread family line of Doonhamer printmakers. Pete Fortune brings a vivid, real-life account of the industry, capturing his apprenticeship and the vibrant characters and community of the town at the peak of the printing era. He rounded the discussion out by proposing the lifelong fellowships that printmaking can craft. Fortune moved on in his career to become a social worker and is now a writer of memoirs and short fiction.
Wallace, the artist behind Imprints in Time, brought to the panel a career that expands across multiple disciplines, from installation work to filmmaking. His work delves into human relationships with constructed and natural environments, emphasising the idea of ‘insider art’, allowing locations that personally connect to the artist to be central to a film’s narrative. Inspired by the fusion of technology and the environment, Wallace incorporates live and historical data sources to craft the responsive, dynamic audiovisuals found in Imprints in Time and all his installation spaces.
As a dynamic organisation with a diverse range of projects across the region, we’re always eager to collaborate with talented freelancers. Whether you’re a photographer, graphic designer, communications expert, project manager, technician, or possess other specialised skills, we want to connect with you.
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We got stuck straight into our first Creative Spaces project at the start of August, and I think I speak for all of us when I say we had a ball with it. We wanted our installation to examine the ideas of imposter syndrome in creativity and dissect what it is that makes a person creative. And so, the Inspiration Donation was born. It went through a couple of iterations before reaching its final form, but we were all dead chuffed with the final installation. We started off by going on a wee adventure to the local garden centres to check out clear containers (we did get briefly distracted by the fish on display at Heathhall Garden Centre) and had a roam about the Range to get the rest of our supplies together.
We worked together on four panels of collage to demonstrate how we hoped the final product would look – we experimented with creating stencils for these too, along with the ‘feed me’ stencils that went up on the walls. It was great to start working together on some artwork, it was a fun way of bonding and building each other up as a team. The installation went up with the help of Stovie & artist Katie Anderson, who offered her expertise and guided us through the process. We had some brilliant donations from the Stove team after we had added our own inspirational pieces in (some Blu Tack, a feather and a funky rock), such as a vintage toy car, a post-it note that read ‘Sparkle Baby’, and a map of the town.
Our Conversing Building project was a super fun introduction to our roles at Creative Spaces. It was my first opportunity to work collaboratively on a creative project with other young creatives, something that felt quite daunting at first is now something I’m looking forward to doing more of in the future.
James
The Conversing Building project pushed us straight out the gate to create something that represented us, and in turn our community in Dumfries. It helped us work as a team and realise where some of our strengths lie”
Sonah
Conversing Building was a really interesting jumping off point for our time with Creative Spaces. Working on this project taught us how we fit together as a team, and got the ball rolling with our style and approach.
Anna
Creative Spaces is a Dumfries-based collective of young creatives, working with and advocating for our region’s young artists.
Situated in the heart of Dumfries, Creative Spaces collaborates with young creatives from across the region, providing young people with opportunities to engage in the arts. Whether it’s through events, workshops, mentorships, or our annual Associates Programme, we aim to enhance Dumfries and Galloway’s creative scene by offering free access to opportunities and paid commissions.
Keep up to date with the Creative Spaces team on Instagram: @creative.spaces_
An update on the next phase of Stranraer’s waterfront development project by Maya Rose Edwards.
The Stove and Creative Stranraer have been commissioned by Dumfries and Galloway Council to use creative placemaking techniques to involve the local communities of Stranraer in the rethinking of the town’s waterfront spaces as part of a major regeneration effort following the ending of the ferry service to Belfast in 2011.
In November 2023 we commissioned artist Maya Rose Edwards as artist-in-residence for the waterfront – Maya’s brief was to use their creative practice to reach out to diverse communities in the town and seek their thoughts and ideas about the kind of waterfront they’d like to see for the town. This initial phase of the project was very successful – ending in a public festival day called Raising the Sails. We were delighted that DG Council have integrated a creative placemaking approach into the continuation of the One Waterfront project and we were able to bring Maya back to the town for a second stage of work. This is their first blog on returning to Stranraer.
Watch the Raising the Sails film by CT Productions HERE.
In the initial Harbour project we engaged with nearly 900 local individuals and 27 community groups to get people’s thoughts about the kind of waterfront they would like to see for the town. I am now homing in on one aspect of the proposals – a new area of ‘reclaimed’ land between the slipway and the East Pier which will be formed using the material dredged from Loch Ryan to make the harbour area deep enough for larger boats to use the marina.
Location of ‘Harbourland’ marked with X
Site specific research/concept realisation
My hope is that Harbourland will be a new piece of Scottish coastline built from the ground up using community ideas and creative inspirations taken from the locality. I have commenced the initial research process thinking about the nature of the land itself – the dredged Loch Ryan sediment. Sediment is an essential component of natural cycles and ecosystems it it acts as a constantly changing barrier between the ocean and coastal communities. I’ve been considering ways in which that ‘barrier’ can instead increase our access to the coast and our connection to the water itself. Turning the tide towards a future where the communities in Stranraer are more connected to their coastal culture and its ecosystems.
I’ve also been thinking about oysters. The Loch Ryan oyster beds are a rare and unique feature of this coastline, and something of great pride for the communities of Stranraer. Oysters themselves are natural dredgers, with each individual oyster filtering over 50 gallons of water per day. Once an oyster attaches to a bed, it grows and forms around the surface it attaches to. It’s like starting a rubber band ball, the oyster needs an initial surface to attach to, but once they start growing, they can transform an artificial reef into a natural one. The question I am asking myself is – how can we act like the oyster to build an infrastructure that benefits both the toon and the coastal biodiversity? What are the types of ‘surfaces’ that communities in Stranraer can attach to and make their own? How can harbours and sea walls become landmarks of heritage value for communities of the future?
With this site-specific research underway, I’ve began to combine the visual languages of the geologic coastal sediment and the organic processes of the oyster bed to develop sketches of landforms, tributaries and coastlines for the Harbourland proposal.
Co-design and collaboration
With initial sketches starting to take shape, I then began to meet with local folk, organisations and marine researchers who were key partners within Phase 1 of the Harbour project for their input. We have all sat down around a large acetate map and plotted might be needed within this new piece of Stranraer. Some of the feedback included practical requirements for community events, lighting, recycling and growing facilities, etc, all of which have been drawn up and incorporated within the wider design.
As a part of the co-design process, I am putting together a programme of creative engagement activities and events to further inform the proposal for Harbourland and provoke the imaginations of those who have not yet been reached by the project. The commencement of this programme is now underway, with the first interactive installation due to take place at this year’s Oyster Festival.
Harbourland polling station
Oyster shells were historically used as the first ever ‘ballot cards’ during the early days of democracy in Ancient Greece. Communities would cast their shells to announce/denounce happenings within their towns and villages. At this year’s Oyster Festival, the talented guys at the Rhins Mens Shed and I have created the ‘Harbourland polling station’ to bring this tradition back to modern-day Stranraer.
During the Festival, the shells of millions of oysters consumed over the weekend are collected for re-distribution back into the Loch. These shells then form the basis for new growth and the continuation of the native beds. This year before their redistribution, the empty shells will be collected to form a part of an interactive public consultation for ‘Harbourland.’ This 3-metre polling station will hold large clear box sections, within which people will cast their shells in vote for specific features they’d like to see on the land – much like your little blue tokens at Tesco! This data will be recorded to further inform the design proposal and initiate important conversations about what matters to people most. From interactive play structures to a sheltered place to sit and bide a while – this will be the first and most public opportunity to engage in the co-design process.
Siltcrete trials
I will also be undertaking several material trials. I have been working with the form of the Oyster shell as a sculptural reference point, exaggerating its topographical layers to create tiered island structures. These forms also reference harbour staircases, where ecological growth can be tracked through tidal fluctuations.
I have been experimenting with use of the Loch Ryan seabed aggregate (a mixture of Grey Wacke, shale and Red Sandstone) for use within sustainable building materials, leading me to create ‘Siltcrete’. I have been researching the many ways in which architects, sculptors and engineers have been developing organic material composites towards a sustainable future. Due to the rich mineral content of the dredged seabed, the incorporation of this material into the foundations of Harbourland should greatly improve the biodiversity we’re hoping to achieve.
From hand carved sculptures cast in silicone to form a mould, I have been creating ‘Siltcrete Harbours’ from a mixture of cement, local beach sand and coastal aggregate. I have formed a relationship with marine biologists at the Solway Firth Partnership who have offered to formulate a report at the end of the installation period to track the ecological growth in the harbour, on the siltcrete and within this topographical form. This should form a key piece of research within the wider proposal for Harbourland.
Siltcrete experiments installed on the harbour steps
Until next time
Over the next few months as we move into Autumn, residents of Stranraer should expect more opportunities to engage in the Harbourland proposal programme, beginning with a sandcastle competition on Agnew Park beach on Saturday 28th September. All participants will receive a free ‘Stranraer Oyster Bucket’ inspired by the topographical sculptural trials. Over the course of the afternoon, we will fill the coastline with a community oyster bed of inspired organic structures! Prizes will be available, see poster below for further details.
If you want to find out more about the Harbourland proposal programme or the context of the project, please contact Maya on [email protected]
