Painters, sculptors, writers, musicians, poets and a barrage of other creative practices. These are the kind of people I am surrounded by daily working in the creative industries. I work in event production so I have never considered myself a ‘creative’ or at least not in the traditional sense. This idea of not being ‘creative’ has been something that for the last year or so has followed me around and has been reinforced by this same question that keeps cropping up.
Often upon meeting new people in a creative setting, I am innocently plagued with the question;
“So, what’s your thing?”
I seem to tiptoe around the answer, often changing it up depending on the company. They range from “I work in event production” to “sometimes I do a bit of Burns but only ever in January or when my mum forces me to at family gatherings.” But mostly my response is “I don’t really have a thing.”
This was the response I gave to artist Robbie Coleman when he asked me that question during a dreich derig of DLux Festival in early February. Robbie wouldn’t take this as an answer and I began to tell him that I enjoyed making things with wood, reading poems, cooking, writing, sewing and painting amongst other things. However, I don’t do these things well or often enough to consider them “my thing”. After this conversation, Robbie gave me an answer to that question that I had never considered an option. “That’s easy” he said;
“…Your thing is everything!”
I have spent a large portion of my professional life feeling like an impostor in the creative industries for not honing in on a singular practice but the thing is, we don’t need one practice. All the little things that we do in life that bring us joy are our things. We all have creativity inside us, whether that’s rinsing your favourite song on Spotify or sticking ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ stickers to our bedroom walls. Humans are constantly learning and adapting. It would be naive to think that we are restricted to one particular job, activity or hobby to define us.
Next time you have got yourself in a tizzy because you don’t know what a G chord is (or if it even exists?) or because you colour outside the lines more than your 4 year old nephew, think about all the little things you do that make your heart sing. That’s what makes you creative. That’s your thing.
Wednesday, 23rd March 2022 marked two years since the first covid19 lockdown in the UK, a moment to reflect on the journey we have all made over the past two years, and the changes that have impacted all of our lives.
To mark this moment, The Stove hosted a series of events over the course of the week Charting Two Years of the Atlas Pandemica project. Atlas Pandemica took place from Summer 2020 to early 2021, and saw ten artists projects working with communities across Dumfries and Galloway and the direct impacts on them as a result of the pandemic.
The project culminated in the publication of a new Atlas, a series of Maps to a Kinder World, with each project contributing a map to help guide us in the next steps we all take. Atlas Pandemica also includes additional documents sharing future ambitions and research developed through the project, all of which can be found on our Atlas Pandemica webpage.
Our Charting Two Years events included:
The Cafe at the End of the World, hosted by Robbie Coleman, Jo Hodges and guest Joe Woods as part of the Distance: Proximity: Loss project.
Conversations were hosted around care and the work of unpaid carers hosted by Annie Wild and Emma Jayne Park.
A memorable guided walk around the Spring Fair was supported by TS Beall including a shot on the waltzers!
An official oak tree planting and writer’s readings afternoon at Dumfries Museum, featuring JoAnne McKay and Karen Campbell, with one of Karen’s stories inspiring the planting of an oak tree.
The Atlases have also been installed in the form of a temporary exhibition in the Dumfries & Galloway Council HQ building on English Street, and The Stove Cafe.
Alongside this, a limited number of print edition Atlas Pandemica’s are being gifted to influential and inspiring people up and down the country. We hope that the impact of the Atlas Pandemica project will continue to live on long after the conclusion of the individual activities.
It’s easy, when initially developing a creative project, to let your dreams run away with you. When I first thought up the project that I would be developing within The Stove this winter, my plans were, on some scale, grandiose. I saw the project spanning across the region, inspiring five football teams (full size, not 5-a-side) of young people, who, like me, had grown up surrounded by the moss and the hills and the dry-stone dykes of Dumfries and Galloway, dreaming of clapper boards, dressed sets, and, let’s be honest, Hollywood* mystique (*note the two Ls.)
The project I was aiming to deliver was a series of screenwriting workshops with three groups of young people from the region who, on a national level, fell under the bracket of ‘rurally excluded’, each from a different geographical area of the region. (Aside: we could have a whole other conversation (and multiple debates) about the phrase ‘rurally excluded’ and its role within diversity and inclusion, but that’s for another time.)
My aim was to teach these three groups of young people how to construct short narrative films, focussing on naturalistic and localised film, and through this process co-write a script with each group, that I would then go and shoot.
I envisioned ending with a series of coming-of-age short films based within the region, telling stories that spoke to a generation of kids who rarely (if ever) see themselves on screen. This would combine my own practice as a director, and the work I had been doing for the past six months at The Stove in community arts. The thought of inspiring the aforementioned penta-football gang of local-next-generation screenwriters and filmmakers appealed to no end.
I’m going to do something you are generally not supposed to do in storytelling. I’m going to drop the spoiler in right at the second act:
I didn’t reach my expectations for this project. I’m going to do something else you are generally not supposed to do in storytelling: admit that I am an unreliable narrator. To say I didn’t reach my expectations for this project, would be telling only half the truth. The full truth, which sometimes we must wrestle with to discover, weed out of the proverbial pavement, is that my expectations shifted entirely throughout this project, and my initial goals, although in some ways not entirely met, paled in comparison to the happy accidents that shone through.
Due to various circumstances, I ended up only working with one group, of five young people, all from one town.
Firstly, with the impending threat of another Covid lockdown, all the schools I had hoped to work with were closing their doors to external visitors. Another group I had been introduced to were, sadly for me, not at all interested in screenwriting. Other pre-formed groups across the region had their spring schedules signed off well before Christmas, and were therefore unavailable. This singular group situation was not the geographically wide-ranging cinematic spectacular I had planned for. But within the confines of reality, I was able to spend more time and energy working with a group of young people who were determined, hard-working, and, truly benefited from the workshops in ways I had not at all anticipated.
(Disclaimer here: I definitely do not claim to take all the credit. I’m sure, without me, the group would have developed these skills in time on their own; and the team leading the group were making leaps and bounds with their photography and filmmaking abilities before I even stepped foot in the space.) But to see, first-hand, the benefit of having a space for young people to collaborate and work creatively, to try new ideas, and to (it seems so simple in hindsight) just be themselves, is more valuable than any evaluation procedure jargon I could have come up with in the first place.
This realisation, this eureka moment, is that what so many young people in rural communities really need is a space to hang out, to eat snacks with their friends out of the cold, dark Scottish winters, to truly be themselves around people who accept them and want to support them. A space to try out new ideas without the judgement of small-town-small-minds that can so often hold back anyone who does not conform entirely. I am definitely not the first person to make this realisation – I have seen colleagues in the region come to this conclusion and work tirelessly to provide these environments for the younger community. But to see it with my own eyes, up close, to be told by one of the young people that they feel ‘more at home here than at home’, to be able to contribute to that safe, comfortable space, where a young person is able to just be themselves. There’s nothing that could be more valuable, more inspiring, or more cinematic than that.
It’s likely that the Marvel fans among you might already be well acquainted with the ‘multiverse’ theory, for Marvel, an all-too-convenient premise to string-out an empire of franchises and merchandise to rival Dolly Parton’s wig collection.
But for those who think Iron Man’s a cut-price Forman grill, let’s steal from the internet to better explain it…
The multiverse is a hypothetical group of multiple universes.[a] Together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them. The different universes within the multiverse are called “parallel universes”, “other universes”, “alternate universes”, or “many worlds”.
Thanks Wikipedia!
Imagine it. An infinite web of universes born from even the smallest encounters, where realities blur and bend from even the smallest decisions.
Where whole worlds of stories and sorrows, memories and hopes as vivid and colourful as your own exist within each passer-by.
Supported by DGU, the High Street Multiverse is a digital, public art project working with 5 emerging writers from the region, this unique initiative supported writers to craft five individual audio stories to be placed within the town centre of Dumfries, through a specially designed series of QR code sculptures, the artworks will immerse listeners into new imaginative worlds, traversing time and space.
Under the mentorship of writers Des Dillon, Karen Campbell and Karl Drinkwater, emerging writers Carolyn Hashimoto, Davey Payne, Cameron Philips, Kris Haddow and Jasmine McMillan, worked together in a 4 month period to craft 5 unique tales inspired by Dumfries High Street. These immersive and imaginative works were later recorded, mixed, mastered and designed by producer John Dinning to create immersive audio works, adding an exciting new layer to the tales.
As part of the project’s conclusion an accompanying publication is set to launch on Friday March 11th at the Stove Café, alongside the artworks themselves. The evening will feature talks and readings alongside a preview of the works themselves. This exciting project culminates alongside a creative writing workshop with Multiverse writer Carolyn Hashimoto exploring the doors and portals of the town the next day.
We hope you can join us in celebrating a new imaginative addition to our town centre, where worlds hidden in the undergrowth of the streets or in the reflections of passing strangers will be heard for the very first time.
1000 years from now lies only 5 minutes from here…
High Street Multiverse Launch: Meet the Makers of the Multiverse
Evidence for Committee: Digital, Culture, Media and Sport
By Matt baker
The Stove often contributes to Government consultations – these are one of the ways that policy is shaped. Committees are the way that Government oversees what it does, so the Culture, Media and Sport Committee looks after the work of the Dept of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS), by suggesting new policy directions and holding ministers to account for what they have promised. It is these Committees that run consultations – when they want to explore something, they call for people’s views, they then hold committee sessions to discuss what has been submitted and often call people to speak to them at these sessions. Following this, a committee will make set of recommendations to Ministers and often new policy results.
As part of the DMCS’s most recent consultation, or ‘Call for Evidence’, in a subject very relevant to the work we do here at The Stove, I asked members of The Stove Network to contribute their thoughts to the Stove’s submission. The following is that submission which incorporates the feedback of our members.
Here at The Stove Network we use arts and creativity to enable communities to vision, create and enact new futures for themselves and their places. At the core of our mission is an understanding of arts not as something solely for an ‘arts audience’ but rather as a vital contribution to society on all fronts.
TSN has a venue in Dumfries, in the South West of Scotland, which acts as a hub from which to work across the wider region. We work closely in partnership with the local authority, community organisations, local businesses and charities to catalyse meaningful change in places and communities. Initially this was focused on Dumfries High Street itself, but as the organization has grown, our focus and reach has become region-wide. We are recognised nationally and internationally for the quality of our work in creative placemaking with communities.
Our vision is to make Dumfries and the wider region a place where communities thrive through collaboration, enterprise and risk-taking; a place where everyone is supported to be involved creatively, and to take part in the celebration and making of our culture.
We do this through place-based work and embedded arts practice. As well as operating from our hub in Dumfries High Street, offering space, facilities and arts programmes to engage wide and diverse communities, we also work in places throughout the region on a project basis seeking to build local capacity in creative placemaking. We work with partners and strategic bodies to support meaningful collaborations for place-based working, and to develop pathways for skills development and access to creative careers. We build and sustain networks locally, regionally, nationally, and increasingly internationally through which we share best practice, most recently through publication of our Embers research on creative place-making in the region.
Over the ten years that we have been operating, we have developed and sustained a public programme of place-based and community-focused work. In 2019-20, The Stove Network delivered 5+ public events per week with 5,800 people directly participating in creating projects and over 150 groups/organisations collaborating on the shared vision of our work.
How can culture reanimate our public spaces and shopping streets?
Our experience is in the long-term embedding of cultural initiatives in town centres where there is NO existing cultural infrastructure to support this. You can read HERE the story of how The Stove established itself, built a cultural sector and started a community-led regeneration initiative that has brought 5 High Street buildings into community ownership as part of a £25M redevelopment programme for Dumfries town centre.
Please see Q.3 below for evidence re supporting similar processes in other places without existing cultural and creative infrastructure.
The key precondition to starting initiatives such as this are:
Access to affordable space in town centres. In order for this to happen policy needs to make it more difficult for commercial property owners to leave premises empty. Inducements/sanctions are required to force owners to allow creative initiatives to start in town centre properties.
Easily accessible project funding to pilot creative initiatives in town centres
Follow up core funding to sustain initiatives that show promise
Support for regional arts organisations to supply mentoring support/capacity/resource to help new local initiatives to grow in locations around a region.
Support for bringing national festivals/events into regional town centres to augment grassroots creative infrastructure as it begins to grow.
Doing this will create:
vibrancy in town centres – a significant new offer for towns and creating new footfall for existing businesses
new creative businesses and opportunities for young people giving them reasons to stay and contribute to their home towns
creative and community-led visioning for towns
new identities for places that will attract new businesses and people to relocate
How can creatives contribute to local decision-making and planning of place?
The Stove Network has pioneered the practice of Creative Placemaking on Scotland:
Creative Placemaking uses creative practice to engage communities at grassroots level, building on the existing culture, activity and relationships in each place. It brings people, communities, groups and organisations, public and third sector agencies together to co-develop better strategies for our places. It is a collaborative framework that allows communities to take a lead and creates opportunities for personal growth in participants, the growth of new initiative/enterprises and supports a sustainable creative and cultural sector.
This was based on 6 months research with 21 community-based organisations in South of Scotland and presented recommendations for a Creative Placemaking Network approach to support this practice in communities throughout the region.
Case studies on The Stove’s Creative Placemaking practice to support local decision-making and place planning are linked below, they have been written by:
How can the Government support places without established artistic infrastructure to take full advantage of the opportunities that the levelling up agenda provides?
The Embers report refenced in Q.2 above gave a blueprint for a regional support network for Creative Placemaking through a network approach. In 2021 The Stove began a pilot for a regional Creative Placemaking Network for Dumfries and Galloway. Through this The Stove is supporting 5 community anchor organisations (3 of which are not ‘cultural’) to host 2 creative practitioners for a year to work in communities that are not usually heard in local planning processes and work with them to develop practical visions and projects to improve their places and their own lives within them.
The pilot is called What We Do Now and has just received continuation funding rom Scottish Govt.
How should Government build on existing schemes, such as the UK City of Culture, to level up funding for arts and culture?
Schemes such as UK City of Culture could actively promote Creative Placemaking and regional support networks. The Stove was recently part of a South of Scotland/Borderlands bid to UK City of Culture – it was not successful because it did not follow the model of regeneration laid down by the scheme in previous years. This felt like a missed opportunity and out of step with current practice and reality in post-covid communities.
Ahead of Creative Space’s mindfulness month, team member Jenna Macrory shares her thoughts on using Stoicism as a method of mindfulness for creating.
Note: Each of the following points could be an essay in its own right. It was extremely challenging whittling down such an expansive way of thinking into a few points. Although I’m an avid fan of Stoicism I am no expert. What I do not what the following text to be interpreted as is me preaching an approach to being creative (although I hope you do find elements of it you can employ in your own life). This is simply an account of how I use this thinking in my own practice
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As a teenager, I used to wish there was a way to know how to make the “right” decisions. I would get incredibly overwhelmed and often burnout because of the pressure I placed on trivial matters. Then I encountered Stoicism, an ancient school of philosophy emerging in the third century B.C.
Initially developed by the Greeks and expanded on by the Romans this approach to life became incredibly beneficial for me because it provided a set of logical rules to live my life by. Stoic teachings made sense of the difficult times and provided me with a way to navigate life’s complexities. As I’ve progressed through my musical career I find myself turning to the ancient teachings as a way to navigate a highly competitive sector.
One of the most common misconceptions about Stoicism is that it is simply about remaining stoic. Rather than being concerned with enduring hardship Stoic thinking is about facing these difficulties head-on by identifying what is, and what is not in your control. Roman Orator Cicero offers the analogy of an archer shooting an arrow to aid us in comprehending this:
“Take the case of one whose task it is to shoot a spear or arrow straight at some target. One’s ultimate aim is to do all in one’s power to shoot straight, and the same applies with our ultimate goal. In this kind of example, it is to shoot straight that one must do all one can; none the less, it is to do all one can to accomplish the task that is really the ultimate aim. It is just the same with what we call the supreme good in life. To actually hit the target is, as we say, to be selected but not sought.”
The archer can do everything within his control to hit the target, from strenuous training to the selection of adequate weaponry but despite this, there are still variables once the bow leaves the arrow. The shooting of the bow is in the archer’s control but the arrow colliding with the intended target is never guaranteed. This is extremely relevant for the majority of creatives in our modern world.
When I release a song there are many factors within my control including the sound of the track and the marketing but alas this does not guarantee the commercial “success” of the song. The number of times my song is streamed or shared is not something I control even though I have aimed for my personal goals. I have selected my target but it is not sought after.
This brings us to my next point, who are you making your art for? To illustrate this point I would like to reference the Byzantine Military Commander Belisarius. Born in 500 A.D., Belisarius accomplished a plethora of notable military conquests in his life including recapturing Rome following the demise of the Western Roman Empire. One would expect a commander of this calibre to be adorned with military accolades but contrary to this Belisarius was condemned by the paranoid emperor that ruled over him. Emperor Justinian the first grew suspicious of Belisarius and his achievements were underwritten by bad politics which eventually led to him being tried and convicted for conspiring against the Emperor. The irony of this is that Belisarius had the opportunity to cease the throne multiple times but he chose not to. He identified that this was not his path, it was not his work and he took pride in the career that he did have. He showed up, he did his job and he expected nothing more.
Despite historians and scholars criticising Justinian’s treatment of Belisarius, according to records, he was not one to complain about his poor treatment. Although extreme examples of Stoic values such as this are not uncommon in the Classical Era, they are highly applicable to the situations many artists find themselves in. Belisarius was able to bypass the negativity associated with his circumstances because he was simply doing his job. He identified that not only did he not have control over how the Emperor may treat him but he knew that any additional praise that resulted due to his conquest was simply a bonus. This is how creating art should be.
Interpreting the Stoics it becomes evident that the purpose of creating music or any art form is not to receive praise. Any praise received is a bonus.
“Believe in your art and make art that is true to you and your ego will get out of your way.“
It is very easy to say all of this but from my experience with Stoicism, it is an intense philosophy to live by. It is not as easy as just being the best version of yourself it is naive to think it is this simple. Life often gets in the way but that is okay, it is okay to stumble and falter when we are trying to be better, and we can see this depicted by one of the world’s most prominent Stoics Marcus Aurelius:
“When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstance, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better group of harmony if you keep on going back to it.”
New Year resolutions are the perfect antithesis of this quote. Too many of us are familiar with the process of setting an overly ambitious goal which will leave us disheartened when we inevitably give up because we are unable to incorporate our new goals into our lives in a healthy manner. Rather than reprimand ourselves for this, Aurelius conveys that this will be unavoidable at times and that is okay. But we should not give up. We should go back to our goals and approach them in a manageable way. Before utilising Stoicism in my practice I would spend long days at my computer making music before getting frustrated because I had not produced any quality work. This would result in long hiatuses from music-making which would make returning to composing incredibly daunting. Now instead of pressuring myself into long sessions, I dedicate two or three hours every night to making music. It is a healthy part of my schedule although I do also have a social life which does often result in socialising during this time. Although I am strict with my music-making when I miss a session I do not get frustrated at the fact I have not composed that day. Rather I recognise this, reflect and set the intention to compose the following day.
Despite history repeating, we tend to disregard the teachings of civilisations that came before us. Stoicism has guided many people since ancient Rome through life and as long as humanity remains it will continue to guide many more generations. Although Stoicism has been adopted by a variety of people it still seems absent in the creative industries. Through implementing Stoicism into your creative endeavours there is an opportunity to supercharge your art practice while becoming resilient to the mental strains of life.
How do you cope with the stress associated with being creative? Next week Creative Spaces launch their block of workshops on mindfulness. We’ll be launching this block of workshops with an open discussion on mindfulness next week (Thursday 3rd) at in The Stove Cafe from 7pm. If you’re under 30 and would like to attend you can register below:
