Creative Spaces has been supporting me for the last 10 months, helping build the confidence I needed to establish myself as an artist within my own practice, but also supporting me to make new connections that have helped me break into the realm of community art.
This experience has given me the opportunity to explore a large variety of creative ventures and has allowed me to engage with the young people of D&G.
Hear more about my experience and what I’ve learned through the Creative Spaces programme below…
Since completing her time as a Creative Spaces Associate Artist, Leanne has secured regular work helping the community as part of the production team at The Stove Network.
The team at Dandelion are looking for passionate, reliable and enthusiastic people (Change Makers), who share the belief that people really do lead change.
If you’re passionate about community, place and planet and want to come together with like-minded people to support a programme anchored in driving positive social change, they’d love to hear from you.
Volunteer opportunities are available at the Unexpected Garden Site in Stranraer and across the other Dandelion project site throughout Scotland.
The deadline for applications is 12pm on 20th May 2022
No experience is necessary, however, there are some qualities they’re looking for:
Enthusiastic, reliable and flexible;
Friendly personality with good communication skills and initiative;
An interest in contemporary culture;
Ability to commit to a minimum of 2 x 4hr shifts at the festivals or across other public facing events
Be 18 or over
Dandelion Change Makers roles consist of four distinct areas, working alongside one another to support the Festivals and Free For All events.
Meet and Greet: these volunteers really are the face of Dandelion, they are the friendly faces from whom audiences gather programme information, highlights and guidance from the minute they enter one of our live events. The Meet and Greet team will be around to answer audience questions throughout their visit to the festival, offering insight into the programme or sign posting people to key areas of the site. Our Meet and Greet volunteers are super knowledgeable and love talking with people and supporting our audiences to have the best experience ever. So, stop by and say hello!
Event Support: these are the volunteers who support us to help things go smoothly across our events – you might find them signposting the crowd during a walkabout performance or greeting audiences when they enter the a tent for one of our performances or talks. Event Support volunteers are on hand to help our events run smoothly and efficiently, with audience experience always front and centre.
Artist Support: not always visible to the public, our Artist Support volunteers will be behind the scenes supporting the artists to make sure not only that their individual shows go smoothly, but that they get a fantastic welcome to Dandelion and the community in which our events are taking place – they are the people who ensure that our artists go home shouting about how amazing festival and our places really are!
Access: these are the volunteers who go the extra mile to make sure that visitors who may have access and or additional support needs get the most out of their visit to our events. They are able to answer all your questions and guide you to the right places at the right time to make sure that you get to experience all our performances, talks and workshops.
How to Apply
The online application form gives you the opportunity to make either a written, audio or video application. Whichever format you choose, you’ll be asked to answer the same questions. No assessment will be made of the writing style or the production quality of audio or video recordings. The application form can be found here.
This past weekend, I found myself having lunch with a friend and a stranger. The friend, similarly to myself, is a filmmaker and facilitator of creative activities for young people in rural communities. The stranger, also a filmmaker and facilitator of both creative and career opportunities for young people, works in the South of Scotland, like my friend and myself (as I did up until recently).
The conversation over lunch meandered from our individual film practices, desires and influences, to creative opportunities for young people in the South of Scotland, and in rural Scotland more generally, to the role of arts organisations in tackling, or at least contributing to, the social issues that are so frequently found in rural spaces, and what responsibility art practitioners have to help.
Image by Rachel Shnapp
These are questions that, over the past year, have seeped into the conversations I have had with colleagues, mentors, and friends. Whilst programming events for young people, my team and I very quickly learned that the creative output really is not the goal of this work. What the goal is, though, is a very big question. More than that, it has hugely wide scoping answers. I’ll hazard a guess in saying that some of the aims are to create an environment for young people to explore their own creative practice, to experiment with the arts in various media, to have stimulating conversations with other people that may push the parameters of their perception of the world. But, of course, it’s a lot more than that. What some young people in rural communities lack is not simply the ability to create artworks, but safe spaces in which they can explore, grow and experiment. Where they can spend the long winter nights with friends out of the cold and the wind. Where they can be around people who will accept and support them for who they are, inclusive of any and all traits and qualities.
Of course, there is the need for young people to simply gather with others to creatively make and explore, but as it is said again and again, no art exists in a vacuum, nor does the creative facilitation that works on in the background behind the art. Young people also need all the things that society is not yet providing them with, and, whether it’s right or not, if some of that support comes from the creative community, then is that really such a bad thing? At least in that case, it’s coming from somewhere. Instead of shying away from the reality that arts organisations and practitioners have been and still are relied on to do developmental work, they should lean into it, finding organisational partners with the relevant expertise with whom they can mutually support each other to make change.
I was having lunch with my friend and a stranger, and once I’d left the café, I realised the conversation we had was one that, a year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to contribute to at all. I would have sat at the table shocked at these people’s’ knowledge of the rural art scene, the social issues being faced in rural Scotland, and their intersection. It’s easy to forget what we’ve learned once we’ve learned it. One year on since beginning Creative Spaces, I’ve learned more than I could have imagined about creative production, creative youth work, and the arts in rural spaces. I’ve learned more than I could have imagined about what it is to be a young person today in rural Scotland, independent of my own experience, and I’ve learned that being a creative practitioner (whether you identify as an artist or not), is rarely just about you and your work. As I said, we don’t create in a vacuum, we create in a world, a world that’s sadly riddled with social injustices. I think that if we can all play our part in seeing that world become a little bit safer for even a few people, then the world would be a better place altogether.
To me, good art is that which comes as close to the truth as possible.
It’s hard to ignore the truth when you’re looking right at it, and the truth is that Scotland, particularly its rural regions, have a lot of social issues that aren’t being addressed. I may not have a complete answer to the question I have posed, but I’m proud to be part of the conversation.
Just over ten months ago now, I joined the Creative Spaces team alongside Rachel, Leanne and Jenna. Never having stepped foot in Dumfries, I tried to piece together what I thought The Stove was from behind my computer screen in Glasgow back in early 2021.
In the thick of a Masters, scouting the internet for opportunities which would allow me to exercise creative thinking in a purposeful way (a disappointingly hard task when you’re graduating in fashion…) while giving myself time to reflect and develop on the dreaded ‘WHAT NEXT?!’ question, joining Creative Spaces seemed like a good step to take.
Describing what I have learned as part of Creative Spaces would take too long, and even listing it out would be pretty exhaustive! It has been a whirlwind experience characterised in large by a trial-and-error approach. University and formal education settings in general have given me *a lot* (in fact, we did a whole block of events on this called ‘So You Wanna Go to Art School?’ back in September!)…
... but my time as a ‘Creative Spacer’ has been educating in ways I couldn’t anticipate.
Every day truly is a school day as our small (but mighty!) team handled everything from concept to production of our bi-monthly workshop programming alongside several one-off events.
It was real-life, project problem solving. And each week that looked different. From getting stuck in (and drenched) at Nithraid to having a day of ‘work’ which involved gathering foliage throughout D&G to decorate for the Wild Goose Festival closing event, to emailing pretty much every school in D&G to market our events…we did it all.
The days were constantly changing…and sometimes seemingly never-ending, but always fun when working alongside three others under 30 all with the same propelling goal; to put on interesting events for other young people in the region.
A big part of why I wanted to be a part of Creative Spaces was to become more engaged in community arts and look at ways my individual practice could connect with others.
Perhaps the hardest lesson in it all, was just how challenging this seemingly simple task is. Increasing engagement and ensuring we were facilitating activities and events which were of interest to our community at times felt like an uphill battle. Having spoken to many people in the scene and even having read some books on community art and participatory practice, it’s clear how universal this is. But when it all clicked into place, boy did it feel good!
I wrapped up my time with Creative Spaces with my personal project, ‘REMAKE Dumfries’, a month-long project of clothing regeneration with a collective of young people in Dumfries and Galloway. Facilitating this project involved utilising all the skills and experiences already under my belt. An individual project, succeeding because of the trials and errors that came before. An ending to my time on the Creative Spaces team that I’m proud of.
To sum up ten months in 500 words is inconceivable, but I hope I’ve managed to convey the core of my experience. Ten months full of connecting and creating, sometimes planned, sometimes off the cuff, sometimes succeeding, sometimes falling short. The opportunity to try and test has been a real privilege. My biggest take-away of all? Not everything has to be meticulously planned and conceptualised like it’s a three-month long university project.
Sometimes the most success comes from the simplest or spontaneous of ideas.
The ‘real’ world doesn’t mark you on your workings out (in fact they often don’t see them at all), so whatever messy route you take to get there, sometimes the most important thing is simply that you did.
Since completing her time as a Creative Spaces Associate Artist, Jodie has join the Board of Directors at The Stove Network.
Young people have been exploring Sanquhar life through a lens and documenting what it is like to grow up in the town. Part of the What We Do Now (WWDN) project, Sanquhar in Focus is the first exhibition of Sanquhar Camera Club (SCC ). It opens on and runs to Friday 8 April to Friday 6 May 2022.
The five talented young photographers and filmmakers who formed the SCC are Elliot Brydon Brown, Tarian Hunter, Baillie Reid, Hannah Smith and Hollie Walker. They are supported by WWDN artists, Colin Tennant and Saskia Coulson, who have delivered talks and presentations in Sanqhuar Academy including a six-week photo workshop programme.
Image credit – Sanquhar Camera Club
On the creation of the club Saskia Coulson said: “often as artists, we are invited to join an existing group or community to collaborate or share a certain skill set with. For What We Do Now in Sanquhar, a community of young people interested in creative practice didn’t exist from the get-go and there were months of working with A’ the Airts, the local community and secondary school to establish the collective.”
“I wish this group had been running for years because I love it.”
SCC Student Hollie Walker
SCC students have emersed themselves in learning about the creative industries and developing a wide range of photographic and filmmaking skills. Many of these skills were brand new to the group.
“I didn’t even know I liked photography and filmmaking, but I really enjoy it now and want to become a professional photographer.”
SCC Student Baillie Reid
The Sanquhar in Focus exhibition of new work by the Sanquhar Camera Club opens on Friday 8April from 4 to 6pm at A’ the Airts (8-12 High Street, Sanquhar, DG4 6BL). It runs until Friday 6 May during regular opening times.
Image credit – Sanquhar Camera Club
Sanquhar Spring Half Term Activities
A’ the Airts is hosting a programme of creative events and workshops for young people during the April half-term holiday. to learn about other areas of the creative industries including graphic design, screen printing, sculpture and many more.
The events and workshops, open for all young people between 13-18, have been organised by What We Do Now (WWDN) artists, Colin Tennant and Saskia Coulson and emerging Sanquhar artist, Jack Stancliffe.
Colin said “we’ve invited several very talented creatives who are all from Dumfries and Galloway and in their 20s and 30s to lead the workshops. We’ve done this because we want the young people of Sanquhar to meet and learn from young adults who come from a similar area and background and are working professionally in different disciplines across the creative industries. Essentially, it’s about connecting them with inspirational people to help them understand that anything can be possible through creativity.”
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.
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