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Exploring Community & Creativity in Callan

At the end of June our Artistic Director Martin O’Neill and our Marketing Officer Erin Aitchison travelled over to Callan in Ireland to visit Workhouse Union. This trip is part of a year-long learning exchange between Workhouse Union and The Stove to share organisational practices, knowledge, and experience with creative placemaking. Read Erin’s account of the trip below.

The Workhouse Union and Stove Team – Image by Luke Brabazon

In June, I ventured overseas with our Artistic Director Martin to Callan in Ireland to visit Workhouse Union. Workhouse Union is a community co-design and creative placemaking organisation that supports the development of inclusive, meaningful, positive places and communities.

Callan workhouse building, large stone building with two floors, white sash windows and a blue door
Workhouse Union Building – Image by Luke Brabazon

When I was asked if I wanted to be part of the exchange, I was ecstatic. This trip provided an excellent opportunity to use and share all I have learned about Creative Placemaking since joining the Stove, as well as learn first-hand from Martin throughout the week.

We arrived in Callan, a rather small town 11 miles South of Kilkenny, in the evening on Monday the 17th of June. We had flown over to Dublin from Glasgow and enjoyed a quiet coach journey from the airport straight to Callan – a feat in public transport that Scotland could take some notes from!

We were greeted by Workhouse Union’s Creative Director, Rosie Lynch, who walked us up the High Street, picking out interesting snippets of Callan’s history as we wandered to our accommodation. During our trip, we stayed with Rosie’s lovely mum Heather and we are very thankful for her hospitality and kindness throughout our visit.

Sharing & Learning

After a good night’s sleep and some breakfast, the real fun started. Tuesday was a day of exploration as we were given a tour of Workhouse Union. The team is situated in a wing of Callan Workhouse, a gorgeous listed building, that is also used as studio space for artist Ciaran Murphy, alongside a garden that was managed by Camphill Callan. WHU has an office, library and research room, and a screen printing studio ‘Print Block Callan’ – that we were able to see in action later in the week.

A quick afternoon trip to the sunny Kilkenny

We met team members Noortje Van Deursen, (Creative Producer & Co-Design Facilitator), and Alice Bowler (Community Co-Design Facilitator) as we chatted about our roles and how we each operate in our respective organisations. The explorative theme of the day continued in the afternoon when we were given a tour of Callan and told more about the network of art organisations and collectives that operate in the town. We visited KCAT Arts Centre; a multi-disciplinary centre that fosters creative ambition and professional development for those working in the arts. We toured the artists’ workshop spaces, meeting some of the artists in residence on the way, and watched the construction of a new exhibition that was opening that Friday by Jason Turner.

KCAT Arts Centre

On Wednesday, we had a day of shared learning with the WHU team and answering questions that ranged from how we action administrative procedures, to embedded Creative Placemaking in Scotland and Ireland. We were joined by Mark Girling, WHU’s Administrator, who joined us at the Stove earlier this year as part of the exchange. Afterwards, we stopped for lunch stop at the gorgeous Fennelly’s coffee house before getting stuck back in to sharing processes and experiences with the team. My highlight of the trip was on the Wednesday evening, when WHU hosted a Midsummer pot luck supper. At the supper we were introduced to the wider creative community in Callan; from artists to photographers, to theatre makers. It was a wonderful evening of sharing creative experience and feeling the embedded sense of community Callan has.

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Images by Luke Brabazon

On our last full day of the exchange, we took part in Printblock’s ‘Maker’s day’. ‘Maker’s Day’ is for experienced textile printers to bring a project and use the studio facilities with support and advice from studio technician Michelle McMahon.

Although Martin has experience with screen printing, this was my first time trying it out. The design that we went with was a graphic made up of various images that I had captured over our trip. Martin had sketched elements from them and compiled them all into one graphic.

We printed our design onto fabric first – learning the intricate mechanics of screen-printing from Michelle before graduating onto tote bags. Whilst printing and chatting with the other attendees, you again got a sense of the engaged community Workhouse Union has created in their corner of Callan and beyond.

To summarise my experience of the learning exchange, it is clear that Callan is a place where creativity flourishes thanks to the community spirit that appears to permeate everything that is happening there. I could see so many examples of creative placemaking, and community-led engagement that I have learned from and taken back to our team in Dumfries. I’m looking forward to seeing the relationship between our organisations grow and adapt over the next year and beyond.

Image by Luke Brabazon

Written by Erin Aitchison

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Musings News

Change?  That’s What It’s All About!

By Tony Fitzpatrick

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.’

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News Project Updates

Sahar El-Hady: Creative Spaces Reflection

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 El-Hady singing at the Creative Spaces Showcase 2024
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
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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News Project Updates

Korey Patterson: Creative Spaces Reflection

Young man with blonde hair, Korey Patterson, presenting at the Creative Spaces Showcase
Korey Patterson, presenting at the Creative Spaces Showcase

We asked our Creative Spaces 23/24 Alumni to reflect on their experience completing the programme. Next up is Korey Patterson, read about his experiences as a spacer below.

Korey Patterson speaking at the creative Spaces Showcase
Creative Spaces Showcase 2024 – Image by Owen Davies

The Creative Spaces Programme is responsible for igniting my Illustration career. I wouldn’t have otherwise had the time, resources or support network to initiate the beginning steps of becoming a professional freelance Illustrator. It wasn’t my original plan for the outcome of the programme, but it became a necessity for me after realising that illustration was something I could develop into a feasible career path. 

My time at The Stove filled me with confidence in my unique abilities and prepared me for working in the Creative freelance world as well as the general business world. I’ve gained necessary experience in fields I didn’t consider relevant before, and I’m very grateful for those opportunities.

Korey Patterson drawing Goose for Laurieknowe Primary Pupils.
Korey drawing a goose for Laurieknowe Primary Pupils

Having the time and funding specifically was one of the most useful elements of the Programme as I am much more considerate to the dedication of personal development and training/practice in Illustration. I have also been given lucrative opportunities for me to utilise my illustration during (and now after Creative Spaces) which has been a direct consequence of being an associate. Without this opportunity, I would have never deemed my skills worthy enough to start a career in Illustration, but now I have solid confidence that I am deserving of a chance to prove I’m the best person for the job.

I heard about the role through word of mouth and I was encouraged to apply from friends and family, the job sounded class and I would have been dispirited if I didn’t get it. But I got selected for an interview which was a fun and great experience. If I was nervous for anything, it was how I was going to get along with my potential colleagues. But that was quickly dispelled during my interview and within the first few weeks working with Sahar, Mia and Martha. It might sound cliche but I genuinely feel like I have made friends out of my colleagues within the Creative Spaces team. From being anxious to know if we’d all click, to having dinner at each others houses, was a natural development that I’m really glad happened but not entirely unexpected giving just how well we worked as a team and the warm and pleasant nature of each of them.

The role is a lot of fun, because of the people you work with but also the type of jobs you’re responsible for whilst working as an associate. Programming events is an electric atmosphere as it starts with just throwing fun and interesting ideas around and trying to not get too excited and ahead of yourself over. Then when you have more serious responsibilities, you have a plethora of people there to guide you through what is expected of you. I felt like, the Creative Spaces team were so keen to all be on the same page all of the time, there were no moments when I felt behind on any projects or that I wasn’t up to speed on anything Mia, Martha and Sahar knew.

Korey sketching Devine Tension for Creative Spaces event – Draw Me Like One of our Dumfries Girls

Surplus to the fixed duties of the Creative Spaces programme, I was frequently giving side tasks and projects to help with from other members of the Stove team. For me, this was a form of encouragement and chance to hone my creative practice within a professional environment. This I feel was a direct response to identifying my personal ambition of developing my Illustration – which was a consequence of being in the Creative Spaces programme and Stove environment. There was a period where I was struggling to overcome the feeling of imposter syndrome which seems natural whilst being amongst so many artists and creatives. However, my mentoring sessions with DJ McDowall gave me the confidence in my abilities and reminded me that my practice is unique to other illustrators. The mentoring sessions are such a valuable asset to the programme and we all benefited from them immensely whilst working at the Stove.

Korey's illustrations of Robert the Bruce holding up a man and shouting at him "Holiday Home?!"
Korey's illustrations. Robert the Bruce being refused entry to the Robert the Bruce pub by a bouncer with the caption "but my name's on the door"
Korey’s Personal Project
A collection of Korey's personal project illustrations.

My goal before applying was to become a competent freelancer by the end of the programme. Since the position has ended I’ve been commissioned to do live illustration for multiple organisations around the local area. This is something I would have never had the confidence to do before applying to Creative Spaces. I will state that the programme is responsible for these work opportunities which all count toward building Korey Patterson Freelance Illustrator.

Written by Korey Patterson

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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News Project Updates

Martha Ferguson: Creative Spaces Reflection

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We asked our Creative Spaces 23/24 Alumni to reflect on their experience completing the programme. First up is Martha Ferguson, read about her experiences as a spacer below.

Creative Spaces Showcase 2024 – Image by Owen Davies

Last May, I joined the Creative Spaces programme with Sahar, Korey and Mia; excited yet nervous to throw myself into something completely new. Having appreciated the work of The Stove from afar, I wasn’t sure if I had anything meaningful to offer as someone without a creative practice and with very little knowledge about community arts.

However, during the recruitment process and our induction week, I was reassured that I wasn’t expected in my role to spend 14 hours a week coming up with groundbreaking ideas through blue sky thinking. To my pleasant surprise, I learned that the reality of creative work is that a significant proportion of it is logistics – something that was much more my comfort zone as an ex-paralegal.

What came as the biggest surprise to me, and perhaps the greatest gift I have taken away from my 10 months, is how much I actually enjoyed the parts of the role that initially terrified me. It is precious proof that I can actually be a creator myself and be part of a community that I have deeply admired as a bystander my whole life. 

At such an early stage of my creative career in set design, I know how difficult it is to explore your interests and create a practice on your own. On this point, I feel extremely lucky to have been given the opportunity to experiment with and learn from other creatives within the safe realm of community arts. Getting the chance to engage with different parts of the community and through a variety of mediums opened my eyes to types of creative work that I didn’t realise existed and helped me understand what I am passionate about.

I’m glad that we decided from the outset to develop our programme based upon our areas of passion – a decision which felt like a bit of a risk in terms of being as inclusive as possible and catering to the wide range of interests of our target audience. However, it was a risk that ultimately paid off because who wants to attend an event that feels detached from the team that produced it and inauthentic? This lifted what felt like a huge responsibility to engage with and change the lives of every single young person in D&G. I learned after ten months that simply providing a space and time for like-minded people to meet and talk reaped huge benefits in and of itself.

Martha’s Personal Project

Completing a personal project was the part of the Creative Spaces programme that terrified me the most. I remember early last year discussing with my parents the conclusions I had drawn from obsessive online research on the best way to get into art departments within film and TV if you have no production experience – to produce a self-led fictional design project. It acts as a well-rounded portfolio piece that showcases various skills attractive to hiring managers, and skills I unfortunately did not have. I remember how defeated I felt after that conversation knowing that completing a project like that felt so out of reach.

The fact that one year later I can proudly say my personal project achieved this goal of mine is testament to how much my confidence in my own capabilities has grown with the support of Creative Spaces. But also the importance of organisations like The Stove who lend the necessary expertise, funding, time and space to create – a privilege that most aspiring creatives do not have. I often wonder what stage I would be at now if I hadn’t collected these valuable experiences through Creative Spaces or, even scarier, if I would have given up on my dream completely. If I had the power, I would make Creative Spaces a compulsory rite of passage for every young person in D&G as it gives you the freedom to explore different ideas with the necessary support and a level of independence needed to survive in the scary world of work. 

Written by Martha Ferguson

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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Musings News

Connections & Partnerships: The Value of Culture in Communities

a man standing in front of a screen reading from a script to an audience,
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The Stove’s CEO, Matt Baker, recently participated in a summit between Scottish Government and COSLA (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) called ‘Connections and Partnerships: The Value of Culture in Communities’.

The aim of the event was to encourage partnership working in culture, at local and national level, to support cultural activity at community level.

Exploring challenges, opportunities, and potential actions for change, the event was also attended by some cultural leaders to inform discussions.

Angus Robertson MSP Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture introducing the event.
We caught up with Matt to find out what he was chatting about and how the idea of shining a spotlight on ‘Cultural Value’ can positively impact those working in the creative, social, environmental, and economic sectors at local level.

Matt’s talk followed a presentation by Inverclyde Council about their Culture Collective project 2021-23.

(Culture Collective is rightly celebrated in Scotland, and beyond, as an innovative new approach to connecting national and local cultural opportunity for communities).

‘Like Inverclyde, Dumfries and Galloway had a Culture Collective project which built capacity in community groups to work with creative practitioners to support their work in communities, particularly people and places that had been hard to reach previously.

WWDN Culture Collective Project for Dumfries and Galloway

The legacy of this project for Dumfries and Galloway is the WWDN network which was formally launched earlier this year. This is a vision of our region working together to share resources, capacity and knowledge, using culture to benefit communities.

The principle is that community anchor groups are supported to build experience in working with creative practitioners.

Different communities work together on joint initiatives and all this activity will support a population of local creative freelancers and small cultural organisations.

Community groups and creative practitioners are members of WWDN and use the network to develop new projects and share best practice etc.’

Matt then turned to the practice of Creative Placemaking as an example of one working methodology which can support partnership working across different sectors at local level and draw new support for culture into communities.

‘This approach builds on 12 years of work by The Stove implementing creative placemaking practice in Dumfries town centre.

Our work centres on a simple idea; to use creativity as a tool to support community-led change. Change for individuals, for groups, for social enterprises and for places in their entirety through place planning and the like.

At The Stove we call this ‘Grow Your Own Culture’, a belief in the intrinsic value of participation in creativity, that people making their own culture is equally as important as consuming culture made by other people. This approach often leads to unexpected outcomes right across the spread of social, economic and environmental impact.

In Dumfries, creative projects with communities shaped a conversation across the town about its future, and critically how local people could be involved in making that future. To cut a very long story short, this led to a campaign to ‘buy back our high street’, which became the Midsteeple Quarter project.

Now, five high street buildings are in community ownership and are being developed by the community with over £10M inward investment to date.

What has also become clear through this work is that forming partnerships and bringing culture into collaboration, with other placemaking agencies, helps the creative sector to thrive. In the last year The Stove has cascaded partnership projects to local creative freelancers with 180 individual commissions worth over £200,000 in total.

This year, with South of Scotland Enterprise, The Stove released ‘A Creative Placemaking Approach’ which is published on a creative commons licence and free for anyone to use.

The document aims to lay out a methodology for creative placemaking so that the opportunities and impacts for partnership working across different sectors are clear, and local authorities, for example, feel confident to approach cultural partners about potential collaborations on placemaking projects in health, education, community development, innovation, regeneration and place planning’

Highlighting recent developments in Dumfries and Galloway with the Local Authority taking a creative placemaking approach to connecting larger strategies for economic development with communities on the ground through a place-based approach, Matt went on to talk about practical examples of this work in practice.

This diagram from the publication gives an idea of the spread of impacts from partnership working with the creative sector in the context of place.

Creative Placemaking Impact Diagram – From ‘A Creative Placemaking Approach 2024’

‘We believe this area of work has huge potential for connecting culture with other sectors through the shared agenda of placemaking for the benefit of both.

By way of example – the Economic Development department at Dumfries and Galloway Council is seeing the cultural sector as a vital bridge between strategic infrastructure planning and local communities.

With the advent of Levelling Up and Community Empowerment it is now critical to national funding that communities are directly involved in the design of capital projects – yet in D+G there is a wide gulf between economic development and the grassroots of communities.

In Stranraer, cultural organisations have been commissioned by the council to conduct creative community engagement which is giving less-heard communities a voice in the shaping and delivery of the capital development of the former harbour area and a former hotel on the High Street.

Discussions are also underway about using creative activities as catalyst to bring communities together to develop new ideas which feed into the economic development pipeline.

This work has proved so successful that six weeks ago, Dumfries and Galloway Council advertised, what we believe is, the UK’s first ‘Creative Placemaking Framework’ to enable the council to more easily procure the services of local arts organisations to undertake creative placemaking work.

Of course, there are challenges but it was very encouraging to see this area of work highlighted in the recent National Culture Strategy Action Plan (see S7) and I hope a greater understanding between COSLA and Scottish Government will play a significant part in delivering parts of that action plan.

Matt Baker is CEO and one of the founders of The Stove (est. 2011). The Stove was a progression of his practice as a public artist. Through his career Matt became increasingly concerned with the potential for creative process to empower communities. He sees The Stove as a long-term experiment in embedding a creative resource within a community – the work is a co-directed journey with local people and Matt remains completely absorbed and fascinated by where that journey is leading.

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