Exhibition dates: 21st November – 21st December 2024
We’re inviting artists, makers, and creatives of all kinds from Dumfries & Galloway to showcase your talent in our cosy Stove Café this festive season. Whether you’re a painter, printmaker, jeweller, or craftsperson—this is your chance to share (and sell!) your work as part of our Midwinter Exhibition.
From unique artworks and handcrafted items to festive cards, decorations, and creative twists on holiday traditions—we welcome it all. This is an opportunity to brighten the season with your creations while supporting local artists in the lead-up to the holidays.
Our Midwinter Exhibition will run from Thursday, 21st November to Saturday, 21st December, with pieces available for purchase during our regular cafe hours (Monday–Saturday, 9am–3pm).
How To Submit Artwork:
Artists may submit up to a maximum of two artworks per person.
2D artworks should not exceed 60cm in any direction, and 3D artworks should not exceed 30cm in any direction.
Artworks must be dropped off during one of our scheduled drop off dates (see below), or by appointment only
Artists must complete a contacts form before leaving any artworks. These will be available during our scheduled drop off dates or by emailing [email protected].
Any unsold artworks must be collected on Monday 6th January 2025.
Artwork Drop Off Dates: Artworks can be dropped off on the 18th and 19th November, between 11am-5pm.
*Conversing Building is an ongoing project at The Stove, that looks to activate spaces around The Stove through a variety of visual and public art projects and displays. For more info on the project visit our project page here.
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.
Our work is primarily based in Dumfries & Galloway, so we’re particularly eager to connect with freelancers from the region—whether we’ve worked together before or you’re new to us. If you’ve recently reinvented yourself or expanded your skillset, we’d love to hear from you. Even if you’re not based in D&G but are available for work in the region, we encourage you to reach out.
To join our freelancer database, please fill out the form linked via the button below:
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_
Well, this blog has changed already. I started some scribblings a couple of weeks ago and at that time I was still a member of the Board of Trustees at The Stove Network (TSN). Now I’m not. For me, that’s quite a big change!
At the AGM in February this year I bade farewell as Chair of TSN, a role I’d been in for almost nine years. As part of reporting what the board had been doing and how it had been changing over the year, I said I’d be stepping down, firstly as chair, then as a board member once we had a new chair in place. We were ready for change but wanted managed change, a transition. Sensible.
In a subsequent email to Lynsey Smith (now our wonderful new chair) I wrote that my experience on the board had been probably one of the most “fabulous, enticing, disruptive and creative experiences of my life,” In short, it had changed me. What I’d also seen was that The Stove too was changing and enriching the lived experience of even more people in and now beyond Dumfries.
I knew when I signed up for the board that it would be about organisational change and professional development and that the board had to stay alert, keep up, be water-tight in governance terms but also, importantly, not get in the way of the dynamics coming from our creative community and the people of the town.
I had a clear sense that what was happening in and from The Stove building was different. There was a palpable sense of energy and some urgency that I didn’t quite understand but soon realised it was being driven by the desire and need for change. It was coming from the people of the town, those involved in the many fresh and new projects and businesses in the town centre. It was also coming from a growing band of creative and energetic young people, many of whom were coming to or returning to the area after periods of work, study and travel elsewhere.
In industry they have ‘accelerator projects’ to nurture and bring to life innovative practices and ideas. I saw The Stove as Dumfries’s accelerator project for the creative industries and indeed for the town. I also saw The Stove equally as a creatively driven community development project which was increasingly supporting wider economic development aims in a very tangible way. There were risks too and that was a great thing.
In my previous life, I had been involved in some amazing creatively driven change programmes and projects, but they were often scattered in the towns and villages across the region and not happening to any lasting extent in Dumfries. There were of course a growing number of exceptions like Big Burns Supper, The Usual Place, the revamped Theatre Royal, the Dumfries end of Spring Fling and the D&G Arts Festival. But there was clearly much more creative potential to be unlocked in our regional capital.
I don’t intend to list the programmes, events and happenings that have come from TSN over those years, but for anyone who has spent any curious time in The Stove Cafe, you’ll have spotted that there’s more than great coffee and food happening.
There’s a real vibe and sense of creative energy in the place. I can always spot a ‘newie’ in The Cafe. Their coffee often gets cool as they chat, look around curiously, wonder what those people are doing going up and down those stairs, take in the latest exhibits or eavesdrop at that wee buzz of a meeting going on in the corner.
An hour in The Cafe is like a wee bit of performance art in itself. But there’s a warmth to it all. A welcoming. And a kind of urban-cool. It also feels different. As that 70’s anthem went “…something’s happening here; what it is ain’t exactly clear…”
All of this is the very stuff of change. Any given hour in the daily life of that Cafe and building generates and emits change. Look into what happens in the evenings, in those upstairs rooms and in the creative productions that come out of the place, and you begin to understand what The Stove is, what it does and how it changes things.
The team have had now thousands of young people, businesses, creative and community practitioners, academics and folk from and beyond the town and region and country through those doors. Any trail through the published programmes of the last decade will be testimony to that. I urge you to have a look at the incredible and growing archives on the TSN website. If you caught Heather Taylor’s blog piece last month, you would have some feel for the next network driver: the “What We Do Now” creative placemaking network. An initiative that has all the makings of a paradigm shift.
So, what happens when an organisation that is driven by creative change and innovation faces a very real existential threat? Well, every such organisation, community and individual faced just such a challenge that lasted almost two years. That pandemic thing.
Almost overnight we all experienced enforced change. The personal, community and organisational turmoil and fear was very real. Some coped better than others. At our AGM this year and last, I found myself repeating that I still don’t think we have truly understood the implications of ‘what just happened’. I’m sure we all still are seeing ways in which social, personal and organisational norms and behaviours have changed, even through those pressures to ‘get back to normal’. But strike up any random discussion about COVID and you’ll find things are far from forgotten or back to normal.
I was truly in awe of what the team and membership of TSN achieved during and following those lost years. Rather than lock-down and close the curtains, The Stove adapted, accelerated its innovative capacity, went online, on to social media, big-time, and into print and set up a small but very significant virtual community experience that proved a real lifeline, not just for the creative sector, but for many in the community in general. Have a look at the Atlas Pandemica pages on the Stove website. As relevant now as ‘back then’!
As this piece goes out, we find ourselves again in one of those periods when political leaders predictably thrust upon us the word “change” as a wedge issue. “What we need now is change” vs “The last thing we need now is that kind of change”. Corny though it was, I rather liked Barack Obama’s take on the change thing:
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for: we are the change that we seek
Barack Obama
It’s something like that which drew me to The Stove Network. Now that I’ve gone, wrench that it was, I’m now a small part of that change. That’s what it’s all about! See?
A note from Lynsey Smith – Chair
‘Tony has played an instrumental part in the development of The Stove over the past eight years and has passed on a very steady ship to me. He has been of great support to me as I transitioned into the role of Chair and will remain a close friend to us all. He has taught us many things on his journey, most significantly his ability to make everyone feel part of something, his flat hierarchical approach and gentle nature. Thank you, Tony, from the bottom of our hearts.’
We asked our Creative Spaces 23/24 Alumni to reflect on their experience completing the programme. Lastly we have Sahar El-Hady, read about her experiences as a spacer below.
Sahar speaking at the 2024 Creative Spaces Showcase
Having made my home in Dumfries in 2021, just as in-person events were beginning to bounce back after the pandemic, I was very quickly introduced to The Stove Network by my new friends and became a keen supporter of their activities. It was a pleasant surprise to find young people and vibrant community events in such a rurally dispersed region, and the connections I made through this engagement made me feel immediately at home in what was then a very new environment for me. I began to see a future for myself here and am lucky enough to have found the means and networks to be able to stay.
Sahar at Creative Spaces Event – Draw Me Like One of your Dumfries Girls
After attending last year’s Creative Spaces Showcase, a friend encouraged me to apply for the Associates programme. I was inspired by Jodie Barnacle-Best’s talk about her “wiggly life path” and saw in it similarities to my own trajectory, having graduated with a master’s in Science to then start work in the creative industries. I thought, why not do this for 10 months while I’m working part-time, put these questions about my career direction to rest once and for all, and then get a proper full-time job which uses my degree after it’s done?
Looking back now, I can only laugh at the thought of me being happy in a 9-5, five day week job without creativity or change for the rest of my life. In fact, I now relish the openness of my freelance days more than I could have imagined when I started Creative Spaces. Not only has repeated exposure to a large number of full-time artists across the region dispelled the stigma around “unreliable income” and the myth of “the struggling artist”, I’ve also made leaps and bounds in accepting my own creative ambitions and surrounding myself with the people and support who will help me to pursue my dreams – who I’ll surely need to lean on all the more now that I’ve hit the ground running.
As well as providing a great group of new friends, and multiple paid opportunities to use your creativity, the structure and support of Creative Spaces was just what I needed at this point in my life. Monthly mentoring meetings with the experienced and kind-hearted DJ McDowell, absorption into the non-hierarchical and multi-talented Stove Team, and dedicating two days a week to freelance creative projects until it becomes habit, all have nurtured my creative practice from a tiny seedling hiding under a rock to a sunflower in bloom.
I’ve always been someone who doesn’t know what they want but has a growing list of things they don’t want to be or do. Now, thanks to Creative Spaces, I am (at the advanced age of 26) firmly on the path towards what I want to do, due to the simple yet priceless resource of being given the time and encouragement to think about it. For this, I will always have the amazing Stove Team to thank, so huge love and gratitude to each and every one of you – I promise you’ll not be getting rid of me or my Pam au Latte café order anytime soon!
Written by Sahar El-Hady
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.
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