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New Openings at The Stove

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Image: Kim Ayres

If you have been passing the Stove over the past couple of weeks, you may have noticed Simon Harlow’s team of artists and makers are very much installed on the ground floor making final preparations towards the regular opening of The Stove, from Monday 29th of February.

From the 29th, The Stove will be open Monday to Saturday, 10am – 5pm, including drop-in information point and cafe space on the ground floor. The cafe at the Stove will be run by Angela and Colin Green, who will continue to run their current business, Mrs Green’s up the street. The Stove will offer a place to drop in, meet, exchange and find out about current events and activities as well as a space to enjoy hot drinks, cakes and lunches. We hope that if the cafe is successful that we can extend opening hours to include more evening provision, and the space will also support our evening events – such as Brave New Words and Reel to Real Cinema, which will continue.

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Plate designing and food discussion workshop with the Open Jar Collective

The drop-in space will function as a place to visit to find out about the Stove and our upcoming programme, as well as a location for workshops, meetings and small scale activities. More details on this space will be announced online, or drop by from the 29th of February to find out more.

The first floor will continue as our project space, with pop up events, workshops and activity taking place. Find out more about our programme here

The second floor is made up of our own digital suite, workshop, and small offices, currently rented out by the LGBT+ Group, Blueprint100, several local artists and guitar teacher David Bass.

If you would like to find out more about how you can use the stove cafe and drop in space, for projects, ideas or events find out about how to submit ideas to us here

Final tweaks to the new designs for our cafe furniture, being produced in partnership with Maklab
Final tweaks to the new designs for our cafe furniture, being produced in partnership with Maklab

The refurbishment of the Stove cafe and interior is being led and created by Simon Harlow of Silo Design and Build. Based in Glasgow, Simon was selected from our design commission call out, and has led an exciting process exploring how to design a functional and beautiful space, using a range of local materials and skills. More about Simon and his design practice available online here

Silo Design & Build from Make Works on Vimeo.

Would you like to help out with the final works on the interior? We are looking for volunteers to help with furnishing and painting here

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Incoming… 2016 at The Stove

What’s in store at The Stove this year? With building works continuing downstairs in The Stove this month ahead of our regular opening times from next month, the Stove’s operations and curatorial teams are busy preparing and planning for a bumper 2016 year. Select each image below for more details.

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Musings News

We Live With Water

SUBMERGE offered The Stove the opportunity to imagine a Dumfries of the future—a future predicted to be up to twice as wet by the end of this century.

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As we prepared for SUBMERGE, our local council unanimously voted for a plan to build a physical structure along the edge of the River Nith, aiming to hold back the surges in this spate river and prevent the flooding that has been a feature of the town since records began. Hard as we searched, we could not identify the longer-term vision for the town that the barrier plan was intended to align with—how did the barrier contribute to a future for Dumfries, we wondered? The only answer we could ascertain was that it aimed to make a small area of the town more attractive to property developers. The strategy of attempting to attract private investment to revitalise the town has been the mantra for the past 20 years; however, it has not been successful and appears increasingly questionable amid the decline of 20th-century capitalism, which is failing to deliver well-being for the majority of the population in Scotland.

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The Stove issued a call for people to join a group that would take an alternative approach and imagine a future where increased rainfall, sea levels, and river surges could be seen as an opportunity. We sought to reimagine Dumfries as a River Town—a place that embraced its environment, a place that Lives With Water.

River-Nith

In this plan, the banks of the River Nith are rewilded as riverbank through the centre of town. These new spaces are integrated with existing green spaces adjacent to the river to create a green corridor along the Nith, which is utilised for a combination of food and energy production, leisure, culture, and education.

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“The commercial district of the town centre is condensed and centres on its traditional functions: serving as a market for local producers, a meeting place, and a centre for culture and heritage. As the transport hub for the region, Dumfries acts as the gateway linking national and international relations to the broader region of South West Scotland.

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The area immediately surrounding the High Street and Market Square is converted to residential use, with urban smallholders and makers capitalising on the proximity to the market for their excess production, bringing vitality to the town centre throughout the day and night.

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This vision was presented in a document titled ‘We Live With Water’, which was written from the vantage point of Dumfries in 2065 and featured commentaries by local writers reflecting on the future from a retrospective perspective.

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Richard Arkless MP visited his constituents in Dumfries on Monday, 7th December 2015, to inspect the aftermath of the flooding from the previous weekend. During his visit, he heard rumours of an alternative plan for the town and the river and obtained a copy of We Live With Water to take back to Westminster as a potential way forward for our town.

Richard-Arkless

We Live With Water was coordinated by The Stove Network and included contributions from:

Katie Anderson
Kate Foster
Rita Pacheco
Alyne Jones
David Slater
Mike Bonaventura
Lee McQueen
Matt Baker
Mark Zygadlo
Ivor Gott
Stuart White
Mary Smith
Lauren Soutar
Rhiannon Dewar
Linda Powell
Katharine Wheeler
(and some anonymous writers)

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Musings News

Quest 3 at SUBMERGE

“Quest” is an ongoing environmental project by artist Jan Hogarth, exploring our relationship with the environment, land, and water. Jan’s working practice grows out of a deep love of the land (in the broadest sense of the word—by “land” I mean water, trees, animals, mountains, etc.), an empathy for it, and a deep desire to heal it. Jan has been working with Sheila Pollock, a practitioner in the healing arts for over 30 years, and invites others who love the land to become involved in the environmental art quests.

In Celtic tradition, healing wells, springs, and the sources of rivers were thought to possess sacred and healing properties.

“Quest” explores rituals and the truths behind them to create and invent new environmental art rituals aimed at healing the environment. The idea of searching for the source of the Nith originated from a local rumour that the Lynors of Dumfries Guid Nychburris took spring water from the source of the Nith and carried it with them when they rode the boundaries of the town. My friend Sheila, who has been working in the healing arts, and I went in search of the source of the Nith, which is located at Dalmellington in Ayrshire. Instead, we found an environmental catastrophe in the form of open-cast mines and landfill sites, with no access to the source due to the activities of the open-cast mine operators. It was shocking—how could this river be healed when its source serves as an example of how we take from the land without empathy for our energy consumption? This seemed to act as a metaphor for the wider issue of climate change. The problem lies with us—our lack of love for non-human life and our lack of reverence for nature, water, and the land.

Sheila has worked with Jan on the Quests project, focusing on the energy of water and its places, and exploring how to lift that energy and raise its vibration. Through dowsing, there is evidence that the vibration of the water she worked on during Quest 1 was raised, and that improvement has been sustained. The Nith presents a significant challenge due to its source in an open-cast mine. Sheila and Jan will be discussing this on Thursday evening at the Stove as part of their work.

Jan’s install in preparation for SUBMERGE

Quest is part of SUBMERGE, an exhibition featured in ArtCOP Dumfries, running daily from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm until Saturday, 12th December.

Jan and Sheila will be discussing Quest as part of A Question of Scale

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Musings News

For the Love of…Sphagnum

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An extract from SUBMERGE artist Kate Foster’s most recent blog post. To read the post in full visit her blog here.

Kate joined in our recent craftivism workshops, wearing Sphagnum on her sleeves (more on that here), inspiring a love of moss blog post.

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Living with water is vital around the Solway, and I’m discovering that Sphagnum is a kind of aqueous superhero. A single Sphagnum moss consists of a strand of water-holding cells, which can collectively form raised bogs many metres deep, over thousands of years.

Complete raised bogs are now rare. Dogden Moss in the Eastern Borders and Kirkconnel Flow to the west of Dumfries offer glimpses of what the landscape in Southern Scotland might have looked like before bogs were drained and excavated. As I begin a tour of mosses, I have come across the equivalent of mountain-top removal inflicted upon them. My eye is becoming attuned to tawny strips on the low horizon.

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‘This human-made drainage ditch has been dammed, a recent reversal of policy. Peatland Action is a restoration programme co-ordinated by Scottish Natural Heritage: the reasons to conserve peatbogs are beautifully laid out in the National Peatland Plan. Importantly, peatbogs sequester carbon and are sinks for atmospheric carbon. This process is starting in the blocked ditch at Kirkconnel, as Sphagnum strands start a slow and steady occupation.’

Kate has been working with Nadiah Rosli on her recent work Peatland Actions, which is part of our SUBMERGE exhibition. SUBMERGE runs daily from 10-5pm until Saturday evening, 12th December.

Kate and Nadiah will be speaking as part of our Question of Scale event on Thursday, 10th December from 6pm

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Norway House

At the beginning of the month, The Stove transformed into Norway House as part of a project with the research and design collective Lateral North. Over the course of three days, The Stove became a temporary hub, exploring Dumfries’ Norwegian connection.

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Norway House at The Stove became a place for exchange and conversation, storytelling, and remembering.

Many visitors came in, sharing memories of the excitement they felt as children, aged seven or eight, when the Norwegians arrived. They recalled how the Norwegians would sometimes offer lifts to children on their way back to their accommodation, which was in various places around Dumfries. Most stayed at the Troqueer Mills, although there was also a farm on the outskirts of Dumfries, near Lincluden, where the horses were kept.

One lady spoke about her husband, who had lived at 7 Nellieville Terrace as a boy. Their front room was used as the Norwegian Bank, and he remembered the King visiting his home. He often talked about the Norwegians’ visit. The family had hoped to record or share his memories before he passed away but sadly never managed to. I will now pass her details on to Beverly Thom, who is writing a book of these stories so that his memories can hopefully be documented.

The manager of the Greyston Rovers also visited. He explained that they have been playing Norway regularly since 1951, when they became the first team to play in Europe after the end of the war, maintaining the connection.

Norway House is part of an ongoing project, Cultural Wayfinding, which explores alternative ways of understanding and celebrating Dumfries’ culture and history. The project also aims to build new connections with Norway in the future.

If you would like to stay updated on the project as it develops, or if you would like to contribute your story to our growing Norway House project, please contact Katharine at [email protected].

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