With the out-break of COVID-19, we face a shared reality that will live on in the minds of this and further generations in pictures, stories, songs and memories. We are faced with questions we never foresaw answering.
In this time of social distancing, The Stove’s field of operation for community, creativity, care and gathering within spaces both shared and public is now radically altered, without objection. Isolation, distance and confinement are the new normal.
The priorities have shifted. The Stove has always functioned in collaboration; collaboration with communities, with artists, with other arts and community organisations, with policy-makers and as a team. In addressing this new normal we propose four values that will frame our work:
Insight
Perseverance
Open-heartedness
& Solidarity
Over the coming weeks, we invite you to explore with us these values through a series of creative challenges, conversation, commissions and activities that can be done in isolation and through connecting with one another via the internet and in so doing, build and maintain resilience in the present, as well as build hope and strategies of change for the future.
We choose to acknowledge and ask the right questions, host the conversations and create the new spaces where these can happen, aside from the café, pub, High Street or studio.
As humanity has always done, we will attempt to record and archive these projects, and together with our community, inspire a new folklore so that we might retain and remember this time, however it may be, for the posterity of generations’ hereafter.
Homegrown is exactly what the Stove is all about, and what it continues to be. Responsive, locally initiated, developed and owned.
As always, we are open to every idea that comes through our inbox. So please do get in touch if you would like to contribute, in any form, place or style you would like.