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News Project Updates

Atlas Pandemica – Charting Two Years

This March sees the artists involved in the public art project, Atlas Pandemica, host series of events to launch the Limited Edition Atlases. The launch coincides with the 2nd anniversary of the first Covid Lockdown on 23rd March 2020.

Details for each of the four public events are below:

The Cafe at the End of the World

22 March 2022

Join Atlas Pandemica artists Robbie Coleman and Jo Hodges and interdisciplinary researcher Joe Wood for tea and cakes and a discussion about how we might respond to the end of things.

Has Covid changed our view of how we live and can we use what we have learnt about grief and loss to explore and respond to the climate emergency and the fragility of the systems we live within?  Can the holistic outlook of the hospice movement  and ideas like ‘total pain’ or a‘palliative present’ be used to frame wider environmental challenges in our terminally ill ecosystems and provide a framework to respond to anthropocentrism, hyper-individualism, relentless economic growth and the cult of technology? When we are faced with widespread species extinction, extreme weather events and loss of habitats and homes, are there new ways of thinking that might give us a more meaningful basis for our actions?

It’s a Fair History.. A walkthrough the March Fair

23 March 2022

The Spring Fair returns to Dumfries after a 3-year absence. Did you know the last time the March fair was cancelled was during the outbreak of World War II? Learn some fair history and meet some of the Showpeople who travel to Dumfries from across Scotland to make it happen. 

Artist T S Beall and Showperson and Dumfries Fair Organiser Raynor Cadona will lead a walk through the fair and along the banks of the Nith, stopping at sites relevant to Dumfries’ fairs – past and present. Attendees will have a chance to meet some of the Showpeople who have operated in Dumfries for generations. 

Charting Two Years, Pandemic Tree Planting

25 March 2022

Inspired by one of Karen Campbell’s short stories in her Atlas Pandemica collection ‘Here Is Our Story’ Dumfries and Galloway Council Community Assets Supervisor Brian McAviney alongside Elaine Murray, Council Leader and Rob Davidson, Depute Leader will plant a ceremonial oak tree at Dumfries Museum on 25th March at 2pm.

As part of the public ceremony Karen will read from her collection and JoAnne McKay will read from her Atlas Pandemica project ‘What Remains’. Judith Hewitt (Museum’s Curator East) will receive an Atlas Pandemica atlas on behalf of Dumfries Museum.

For Love, Not Money?

27 March 2022

Annie Wild’s Atlas Pandemica project explored the life experience of unpaid carers during the pandemic and the significant role this group of people play in supporting the economy and society. People with any form of caring responsibility are invited to come and take part in a facilitated discussion in a friendly environment on their experiences during the pandemic. All welcome – occasional carers, former carers, paid carers, and people who aren’t sure if they are carers or not.


About Atlas Pandemica

The Atlas Pandemica project ran from June 2020 until November 2021 when it was featured in COP26 in Glasgow.

Atlas Pandemica is a compendium of 10 projects led by creative people, each investigating a different theme highlighted by life during the COVID pandemic. Projects worked directly with people in Dumfries and Galloway, focussing on the impacts and the learning from the community’s experience of the evolving pandemic.

The Project was conceived and is managed by the team at The Stove Network and curated by Matt Baker and Robbie Coleman. The project was supported by Scottish Government’s ‘Supporting Communities Fund.’

The project now has been published as a limited-edition Atlas which comprises a set of 10 maps, each of which presenting one of the Atlas Pandemica projects as a map to a kinder world.

All of the Atlas Pandemic Maps can be viewed here.

The Atlases

The work of the 10 artists who worked with communities impacted by the Covid pandemic has been published as a set of ten ‘Maps to a Kinder World’ within a special limited edition of 50 Atlases. The Atlases are being presented to people and institutions that Atlas Pandemica believe will make good use of them in taking forward some of the positive lessons learned during the last two years. Watch out for coverage of the Atlases being presented around the country.

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Musings News

Contribution to Cultural Policy

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.

  1. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. Easily accessible project funding to pilot creative initiatives in town centres
  3. Follow up core funding to sustain initiatives that show promise
  4. Support for regional arts organisations to supply mentoring support/capacity/resource to help new local initiatives to grow in locations around a region.
  5. Support for bringing national festivals/events into regional town centres to augment grassroots creative infrastructure as it begins to grow.

Doing this will create:

  1. vibrancy in town centres – a significant new offer for towns and creating new footfall for existing businesses
  2. new creative businesses and opportunities for young people giving them reasons to stay and contribute to their home towns
  3. creative and community-led visioning for towns
  4. 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.

In April 2020 The Stove published (with Carnegie Trust UK and South of Scotland Enterprise) a report into Creative Placemaking in South of Scotland.

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.

Categories
News Opportunities

OPEN HOOSE

Got an Idea? Get in Touch!

Open Hoose at The Stove Cafe

Open Hoose is a unique opportunity for anyone with a community-focused idea in Dumfries to use our cafe venue space alongside the resources of the Stove team to launch self-initiated projects and events through the support of the Stove’s experience, space, and production skills.

“Open Hoose is all about growing and nourishing new enterprises, projects, or events in the heart of the High Street.”

What is it?

Open Hoose is a funded* project all about giving good ideas a chance to grow. So whether it’s a regular jam night, a bread club, banner-making group or book club, we want to offer our space, our team and our support to help launch community-based and/or cultural activity in the town, housed within the Stove Cafe. Activity can be a one-off evening or a regular slot, it’s up to you!

Think of it as ‘testing’ an idea. So if you’re not quite sure of the details yet, or even how it will all work out, that’s okay! Come talk to us, it might just be what we’re looking for.

Who can apply and what we’re looking for

This opportunity is available to anyone with a community-focused idea.

We want to hear ideas that have the potential to grow. Even if you’re not sure. Sometimes the best projects can come from even a passing thought. You may even have a project already on the go but could do with that extra bit of support.

When?

Activity will take place between January – March 2022.

How ideas will be chosen

There are no exact hard and fast rules to the Open Hoose project, and we want to keep an open mind to new ideas that come through our door. As a community organisation, we believe no one should face barriers to participating in new experiences and creative activity.

With that in mind, we’re particularly interested in ideas that work with, for and about our diverse communities be them of interest, place, or identity.

We think of Open Hoose as a ‘testing ground’ for new ideas, from pop-ups to enterprises, new community groups or arts activity that may well eventually lead you to your next big thing.

Selections will be made against the following criteria:

  • The potential of the idea to grow and develop
  • Its potential to bring people together
  • Encourages people to try new things
  • Helps to grow the vibrancy of the town centre as a diverse, community-centred and lively place to live, learn and take part in activities

Whilst every idea will be considered, unfortunately not every project will be taken forward due to the resources, timescale and current funding available though we will ensure to provide detailed feedback in every enquiry.

We’re particularly interested in hearing from groups and individuals we haven’t yet had the chance to work with.

What the project cannot support:

  • Self – promotional and/or retail activity* (for eg: book launches, solo exhibitions, pop-up shops)
  • Private events
  • Corporate functions
  • Party Political Activity
  • Residency space* (for eg: private space for developing creative work)

All proposed activity should comply with the Stove’s values of inclusion, equality, and diversity.

Some examples of the type of activity the Stove has supported:

  • Drawing For Enjoyment
  • Doughlicious Bread Club
  • High Street Writers
  • Brave New Words
  • DoonGamers

What do you get out of it?

Dependent on needs, The Stove can offer free use of our cafe space in the evening, staffing, marketing support alongside technical and production assistance, decided on a case-by-case basis. We may be able to offer some financial contribution towards materials or other costs. We’re looking for ideas with the potential to grow, within or out-with the Stove Cafe.

Interested? Fill out the short enquiry form below!

Got a question or want to sound your idea out? Give us a bell on 01387 252435 or email [email protected]

*Funding: Scottish Government: Investing in Communities Fund

Categories
Musings

Source to Sea: A Reflection

Post by Nithraid Producer, Sal Cuddihy

Nithraid River Festival has been running as an annual event for the past eight years and I have had the absolute privilege of being the producer for the last five of them.  Last year’s event saw flood, rain and high winds pushing our team to the limit with adapting last minute to still deliver as much of the event as we physically could. After 2019 we thought, “Well, we’re not going to get anything more difficult than that”. Boy, were we wrong.

When the news hit in March that the entire world was under threat from a global pandemic, we were left with complete uncertainty and dread – much like the rest of the world. What is this thing? Are people going to be safe? How long will it last? When did lockdown and furlough become common words that we use in almost every conversation?

It became apparent very quickly to our team that even though the festival was scheduled to be in August, there was a high chance that the event would have either have to be cancelled completely or we were going to have to try and adapt the festival to a digital format – so we decided to flip Nithraid on its head. We looked at the core values of the festival and the reasons why we do it and who do we do it for?


To cut a long story short – we came to the conclusion that we do it to celebrate the River Nith. We celebrate its history and uses, we celebrate its beauty and we use it to inspire our creativity. We use it to teach our children about the wildlife and environment (special mention goes out to Huffy the Heron!) – but most of all we use it to connect with communities. With all of this in mind, we created the Nith inspired ‘Source to Sea’ project, exploring not just Dumfries but the entire River Nith and the communities that it travels through. Throughout lockdown, it was obvious we were on the right path as all over social media people were photographing the river on their daily walks and were appreciating it as they never had before.

Once we had a concept, the challenging part was trying to figure out how we were going to share all of these elements of the river as well as creating and sharing activities for families and children who were finding themselves stuck at home with little to do. We were delighted to have one of our fantastic funders, the Holywood Trust, on board with our reimagined River Festival. The Holywood Trust were a huge support to Nithraid and our entire team throughout the whole project, and we wouldn’t have been able to do this without them – thank you! This scale of online activity was very much new territory but I have the privilege to work with much more tech savvy individuals than myself and we were able to come together to figure out how to present our festival online. I think as it stands, we are now in Version 652 of the project as it turns out there was more than one problem that arose on a very regular basis. I give them all my love and respect for not running away at Version 150 (I will do the embarrassing shout out at the end!)

As we come to the end of our journey, we’ll be pulling all over the research together and sharing it with you in a beautifully designed map, created for us by local artists and graphic designer, Jamie Stryker. This map is the culmination of everyone’s incredibly hard work over the past 6 months. We’ll also be sharing Hugh McMillan’s lovely Source to Sea poem, where he has a dedicated verse for each area that we explored.

One of the hardest things about the lockdown was the difficulty in being able to research and that we were unable to reach out communities and go out and explore. But now we have information, footage and stories about the River Nith that you can use to learn about these communities yourself. I hope the project does what we set out to do and celebrates the river that connects us and brought so many people a sense of calm in amongst the chaos.

Big shout out time!

And a special thanks to Derry and Greg from BattleStations who trekked through the Carsphairn hills with  a lot of kit to try and find footage of the source of the Nith – which turns out wasn’t where I told them, sorry! You got the shot though!

All of those that took the time to chat to us as we were researching the content. One of my favourite moments was when Bob Clements told us the story of the Thornhill’s Rock Festival on the back of a lorry that was plugged into a house!

Finally, a massive thank you to the team that has held this all together. You have done so much more than these basic titles I have written but I have rambled enough and don’t want you thinking I have gone soft.

  • Rob Henderson – web design and master of tech-like witchcraft
  • Kirstin McEwan – marketing and social media queen that makes this stuff look easy!! It’s not!
  • Ruaridh Thi- Smith – project support and all round support to my sanity.
  • Liam Morrison- Gale – community lead & ultimate research Jedi Master
  • Jamie Stryker – Graphic designer and hero that makes the best maps in the whole wide world!
  • Martin O’Neil – Programmer, Word Wizard and keeper of the creativity.
  • Graham Rooney –  Stove Project manager and dude that keeps every single one of us from spontaneous combustion.

Thank you all! All the best,

Sal Cuddihy
Nithraid Producer

Categories
Musings

Looking Forward / Looking Backward

By Hayley Watson.

It’s September already, and I’m still trying to pare away the feeling that this month is a fresh start – a miniature new year, though distinguished by routine, structure and peeled-from-the-packet stationery rather than Big Ben’s chimes, Auld Lang Syne and kisses. The thing is though, a year and a half out of education I’ve still ended up synchronising my ‘fresh starts’ with the end of summer. I’m not sure if this is by accident or coincidence (or, if you want to get philosophical, whether or not there’s even a difference). This time last year I’d just moved to Italy, and this year I’m in the process of moving back to Glasgow, which is a phrase I think I’ve said about a thousand times since I came back to Annan.

The recurring element of how my last five summers have ended, no matter what my plans have been, is suitcases I’ve stuffed my life into and usually an obligatory Ikea trip. The suitcase zippers burst a little along the edges, and anticipatory, so do I. This time around feels like it should be the same but I’m not so sure. Italy felt like an adventure, easy to romanticize. Working for shit pay and hopping from flat-to-flat takes a while to get old when there’s late summer heat and vino-tinto-tinted streets to meet you every time you finish a shift. And the last time I lived in Glasgow, I was a student – I don’t need to expand on why that combination worked.

Beginning my latest move to Glasgow comes in tandem with the end of my contract as blueprint100’s Associate Artist supporting its re-development. Working with blueprint100 this year, after my first experiences shaping its early structure and with four extra years of life behind me, has offered an opportunity to consider the continual motions of change we experience in early adulthood and how organisational support and belonging to a community can make it all feel a little bit more… easy. When I first started working with blueprint100 I was a teenager who’d just realised creative careers are possible, and now I’m an adult (I guess?) who’s a bit overwhelmed by just how many different ways there are to pursue creativity professionally.

A huge part of my role over the past few months has been consulting past blueprint100 participants on their experience and their professional and creative needs. Reflecting on how my own professional practice continues to evolve has been really interesting alongside speaking with other young adults going through the same process – I think we’re all very excited and very ready to take on creative careers, whether full-time or freelance or whatever else (the beauty of creative work is how flexible it can be). At the same time, we’re now living through a pandemic. One excited hand locks fingers with a frustrated/confused/kind of scared one. It’s been comforting for me to understand how similar our feelings and our needs are at this stage of our lives, and this has reaffirmed how important it is – at any stage of life, but especially during the ‘uncertain’ ones – to feel like you’ve got a community behind you.

Community, then, has been a core theme that needs to be considered as part of blueprint100’s identity following our re-development this year. As blueprint100 moves forward, its membership will be re-integrated into The Stove, as it was in its very early days. As part of The Stove, we’ll be centred on creative opportunities that are community-focussed – in alignment with The Stove’s own mission. I started writing this not wanting to mention the pandemic at all (I’ve already failed) but after 2020 I really do think isolation of any kind is the last thing any of us want – including in our creative practices. For a lot of the people I spoke to, myself included, it was blueprint100 & The Stove which introduced us to working creatively in a way that might just possibly make this region feel like the exciting place you want it to be. For a lot of us again, this is something that continues to direct our creative practices. It’s an approach that’s fresh and unique when you’ve previously only experienced creative opportunities which focus exclusively on yourself and the development of your skills as an individual.

Alongside community-focused practice, the future of blueprint100 is one of building an inclusive and accessible creative community. If you’ve spoken with me at all since June when I started the initial consultations, I’ll probably have mentioned ‘accessibility’ and ‘inclusivity’ so much its borderline annoying. I’m pretty sure the words are even on my CV. That’s fine though. I believe, especially where the arts are concerned, accessibility and inclusivity can’t be taken into account enough. Throwing yourself into creative spaces when you’re not even totally sure of your identity as a creative practitioner yet is hard! And there are barriers as well to even claiming this identity alone – if you’re working in a bar 5 days a week, tired when you’re not working, and the total amount of time you can dedicate to even thinking creatively amounts to like, maybe an hour here and there, it’s difficult to feel as though you’ve got any sort of creative identity at all.

By establishing a community of young creatives in the region – whether online or eventually in the real world – we can learn that actually, wherever we’re at right now is fine, and its normal. This doesn’t mean we all need to be in the same positions, but rather that we can see creative careers don’t tend to happen in a smooth, linear, get-a-degree-then-do-a-grad-scheme way. Accessibility and inclusivity within this community should go beyond just being buzzwords. It’s making sure people feel able to speak up and even interrogate its structure without possessing 4 years’ worth of art school language. It’s shaping the opportunities within it to suit its members, rather than the reverse. It’s creating access to the space and tech to get work done because maybe you can’t get a quiet space at home. It’s knowing that maybe you can’t swap shifts to get involved with something, but people get it, and other opportunities will still be there whenever you are. No judgment.

Something I’ve gained from re-evaluating blueprint100’s role in its participants creative and professional development is a better acceptance of my own. I mentioned earlier the vast means through which you can pursue a creative practice, and as much as I said this can be overwhelming it’s also been quite reassuring. Being able to work creatively full-time in the early stages of your practice is a position of privilege, or very good luck. As with many other positions of privilege, not possessing it can have some kind of weird stigma attached. I studied Fashion Design at uni, and felt guilty every summer that I chose not to try and get an unpaid London internship. In the first months after graduating I felt guilty for not applying to graduate jobs that would cover my commute costs and little else. Since then I’ve learned that honestly? I love fashion, but I love being able to eat and pay my bills even more. Van Gogh gets touted as an icon of ‘starving artist’-hood but its reductive to think his work would be any less beautiful if he didn’t have the struggles of simply surviving to deal with. Poverty is only poetic to people who’ve not experienced it.

I guess what I’m getting at with that paragraph is that actually, working full-time in a factory and part-time in a creative role has actually been pretty good. Tiring, but good. It’s totally possible to continue the trajectory of your career while earning enough to live, and day jobs really aren’t as bad as you’re led to believe when you’re still maintaining some sort of constructive creative practice. I originally wasn’t going to move back to Glasgow until I had like… my absolute dream first graduate job. I’ve since decided that it’s equally completely cool to take a 50/50 approach to building my career instead – I’m going to be working part-time in clothing manufacture again, and spend the rest of my time working creatively on a freelance basis. It’s pretty exciting, a little like dropping everything to move to the city and become an artist but with the added security of actually having a predictable income every month.

I seem to have a talent for taking these blog posts a lot further than they’re probably intended to go (blame lockdown and reduced opportunities for rambling to people in real life). If you need a tl;dr for this – blueprint100 has developed, grown, and changed in the past few months at a faster pace than it ever has before. I have too.

Categories
Musings News

Creativity and Community as Part of the National Recovery

The diagram above is The Stove’s submission to The Advisory Group for Economic Recovery for Scotland. It is just the first germ of an idea and we are sharing it now in the hope of generating further discussion with others in the Creative and Community sectors.

Download a full-size version of the diagram here

The premise is simple – our Embers report has clearly shown the pivotal role played by creative practitioners and small creative organisations to initiate and maintain momentum in placemaking projects. These may start with cultural projects, but quickly develop into new social enterprises, asset-based and environmental initiatives. In short – do some cultural pump-priming in a community setting and the payback in terms of community resilience, economic development and people’s wellbeing is incredible.


In the current climate we have thousands of creative practitioners with little prospect of working in the short and medium term. We have communities who have experienced working together for mutual benefit during lockdown and we have many brilliant resources (theatres, sports centres etc) that are lying temporarily idle.

What if we were to pay out of work people in the Creative and Community sectors a Basic Income to work in their local communities to start new projects (or build on things started in lockdown) – these could be cultural projects like choirs, writers groups…but they could also be environmental projects or new social enterprises. Our skill set is to ‘make shit happen’ we are producers, innovators and entrepreneurs! If this National Task Force was to get things started then the national agencies and funders could come in behind and help take things to the next level and, before you know it you have communities making their places, economies and health better.


It may sound mad, but something not so very different was successful in the US as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1934 and again in 1940 in Britain with the Council for Encouragement of Arts and Music which saw a force of musicians staring choirs and orchestras all over the country during wartime.


That’s as far as we’ve got til now – whaddyfink? Let us know and help us shape the idea if you think it has legs..

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