Kirsty Turpie - Public Art Project Worker for Creative Futures
Last Friday, the Scottish Government published the new National Culture Strategy for Scotland, and we are delighted that the Stove has been featured as a case study! You can download and read the Culture Strategy in full online here, and comment on Twitter using #culturescot.
The strategy has three main aims:
to strengthen culture
transforming through culture
empowering through culture
We’ve been having a read of it over the weekend, and have picked out some of the key facts that we found particularly inspirational.
“Value, trust and support creative people – for their unique and vital contribution to society and the economy.”
“Encourage greater openness and diverse cultures to reflect a changing Scotland in the 21st century.”
“Foster international collaboration and build on Scotland’s reputation for cultural excellence.”
“Open up the potential of culture as a transformative opportunity across society.”
“Extend the view of culture to include the everyday and emerging, the established and more formal.”
“Extend opportunities that enable people to take part in culture throughout their lives.”
“Recognise each community’s own local cultures in generating a distinct sense of place, identity and confidence.”
“Everyone has the right to participate freely in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits (Article 27, Universal Declaration of Human Rights).”
This year the Stove took part in the Guid Nychburris Day Parade, an annual event in the Dumfries calendar that sees community groups and clubs in a variety of fancy dress taking to the streets in the evening parade that is the culmination of the days festivities.
In honour of the upcoming Nithraid festival, our Salty Coo returned early from her pastures to take pride of place on a small Mirror Dinghy – definitely the blue-est cow we’ve ever encountered!
Our resident seagull attracted the most attention on the parade route
Ahead of the Parade, we opened out the invitation to smaller groups and organisations to take part in banner making workshops in the Oven and the Stove. The Parade is a great opportunity to share projects and community groups with an audience of thousands along the route, but it can be a bit daunting to take on a large float amongst a small group of volunteers.
On the day, we were joined by the blueprint100 team and some fantastic volunteers – familiar and new faces! and the DGMA multicultural association, who all produced a beautiful collection of banners in record time!
One of the DGMA’s brightly coloured banners
And we even won a prize! Placed third in our category, thanks to the efforts of our banner making team and all who attended the workshops.
The blueprint100 team will be hosting a series of banner making workshops in July and August in the run up to this years Nithraid festival on Saturday, 31st of August – and everyone is invited! Find out about upcoming workshops, or contact Jordan directly to host a workshop with your community group or organisation. For details, visit the blueprint100 Facebook page here or contact [email protected].
How do we connect up the culturally-led work that is happening in communities across D & G and build our region into a powerhouse of enterprise and opportunity?
There is growing recognition that something special is happening in D+G – our creative sector is working at the heart of rural communities and helping to inspire, facilitate and connect other initiatives (eg taking over underused buildings) that are making a real difference for places and the people that live there. The Stove Network has been both a resource and catalyst for the region through its work in Dumfries town centre. It has formed in-depth working partnerships with the local authority and other groups/agencies, building a portfolio of experience in bringing together community, agency and business interests to develop its work in place-making and culturally-led regeneration.
The Stove has received national and international recognition for their pioneering work in this field and with the advent of the new South of Scotland Enterprise Agency (SoSEP) an opportunity has been identified to develop a plan to strengthen the connection between existing projects and seed new ones for the benefit of the region as a whole.SoSEP has granted The Stove funding for a focused piece of work, based on their Enterprising Communities proposal, to look at the opportunity for better shared learning, the support needed for this activity in place-making and culturally-led regeneration and pathways to opportunities in Creative Industries.
How can we work together to strengthen these for our region? What support does this work need to flourish and grow localised decisions for the places we live?
For the next 6 months The Stove will be carrying out a feasibility study for Enterprising Communities, under their project – Embers – igniting culturally-led regeneration across Dumfries and Galloway – to explore and define a joined-up vision for work in place-making and culturally-led regeneration and enterprise in Dumfries and Galloway. This piece of work will not focus on the model to deliver this work but on how we can strengthen the pathways between the work we ALL currently do. We will look at what we need to support this, to encourage new work and sustainable development in this area.
How do we build on existing networks in the communities and cultural/creative sectors – overlaying and combining them to create a powerfully integrated regional field of shared resource, capacity, knowledge, skills and opportunity?
Embers will be led by Katharine Wheeler for The Stove with support from across our networks, agencies and partners. Firstly, Katharine will look at areas of best practice in place-making across the region and secondly, produce a feasibility document as a regional development model for place-making and culturally-led regeneration across Dumfries and Galloway defining out how best to take this forward.
We are working closely with Carnegie Trust who will be providing case studies and help in identifying significant indicators of this work throughout the project.
The feasibility study – Embers – will explore a regional development model in relation to the main aims of how the new South of Scotland’s Enterprising Partnership (SoSEP) can support place-making, creative industries and culturally-led regeneration across Dumfries and Galloway.
This will feed into SoSEP’s current enquires:
What forms of support are needed to enable the communities in the South of Scotland to become more resilient and to help communities grow?
Advise within that what type of support SOSEP could provide, and how, to enable community organisations to become more successful.
What would success look like – for communities and for SoSEP?
We have already been in communication with some of our partners and other organisations and groups across the region about this piece of work and will be looking to connect with others. If you are wanting to find out more about this, or get a copy of our initial Enterprising Communities proposal please email [email protected] directly.
Our Orchestrator, Matt Baker is one of the original founders of The Stove Network and offers some personal reflections about how The Stove started and how it works today.
So just Who or What is The Stove?
‘The Stove’ has existed for 7 years now. Its origins have perhaps been forgotten, and questions and assumptions naturally arise about what The Stove is now, how it functions, for whom and why?
Let me start by stating that I am fiercely proud of The Stove, and believe passionately in its potential to help people shape their own dreams and careers. I also hope that The Stove is a creative force that has become a vital part of supporting local people to re-invent Dumfries as a vibrant and prosperous place, a Dumfries fit for our times.
The Stove started as a conversation in 2011, between 10 artists and creative people working in the area. We all shared a belief that placing a community project with a creative ethos at the heart of Dumfries town centre would have a positive impact on the future of the town and contribute new opportunities for local people, when precious few existed. That was it really – a commitment to the generous way that creative people work together and how that could infuse the life of the town.
There were moments of doubt and significant obstacles to overcome on the journey: ‘how would we run a space?’, ‘where would the money come from?’, ‘how would we organise ourselves and make decisions?’… we have tackled every question and situation in the same spirit – by talking together and applying our founding values:
To work through collaboration (not in isolation)
To innovate (not be risk-averse)
To put people first and consider the emotional landscape of all decision-making
These values bring creative practice into all of the structures and processes that we encounter, developing a working methodology that keeps The Stove open, transparent and flexible. People are genuinely able to shape The Stove in ways that work for them and for the town.
Our values led us to the two foundations of how The Stove works:
The Stove is a membership organisation, membership is free and unrestricted*. Currently we have just over 500 members who, every year, elect a Board of Directors who are responsible for running The Stove.
The Board employ a very small team of core employees who take care of the day to day management of The Stove. The core team supports a much larger group of freelancers – this is a flexible and changing group of people who work on one or more project with The Stove, some of these roles are longer term and some can be just a matter of weeks connected to a particular festival or workshop.
Our doors are always open for members. They can (and do) get in touch at any time with their questions, ideas and projects. Literally anyone can work with the Stove, either in a paid capacity, as a volunteer, for the experience or just the good craic of being involved in something worthwhile. We are proud that in 2017-18 we were able to offer £212,000 in contracts and opportunities for the local creative people and small businesses at all stages of their development. Since 2011, we’ve commissioned £665,775 in total. This is all money that the vision and vibrancy of The Stove has managed to attract to the area. For every £1 of local council support we receive for local projects, we attract an additional £8.00 of income from other sources (check our ‘Key Facts’ for more info about Stove income sources and history)
It has been an extraordinary journey since that original conversation around a table at the Coach and Horses in 2011…but the Stove’s success continues to be drawn from those original founding principles of: people first, collective working, openness and, of course, creativity. Why not see for yourself and come in for a chat – it might just be a conversation that changes your life!
*you don’t have to be an ‘artist’, just interested in our mission to be part of shaping the future of our region. Check it out here
I’ve had cause to think about public money of late – what do people mean by the term? Why is it such a loaded term? Are attitudes different in different societies? Has the nature of public money changed for us over the years? What should it be for now?
I suppose things started with chiefs and monarchs demanding taxes from the people within their tribes or lands to pay for organising their safety and keeping the peace. Then when we moved to a democratic way of organising our society we kept the taxation idea but attempted to make a system whereby the money gathered was a form of common-wealth that was directed to making the best for everybody. In Britain this resulted in incredible, visionary things like the National Health Service and free education for all. In other societies (e.g. Scandinavian countries) there still seems to be a strong sense that everyone contributes and everyone expects to benefit from the resources, services and opportunities provided by the common-wealth of the community. This is not public money viewed as the bare minimum to provide a safety net for those too poor or sick to look after themselves or base-level provision of things we have a ‘right’ to expect like cleaning the streets…rather it is a conscious and deliberate system for giving the best standard of living and opportunities to the most people within a society…and how that builds a place long-term, not just patch the streets.
This is what I have been pondering – Why do we often seem to have such a different attitude in our society? Why are we not proud and passionately engaged in the process of deciding on the best way to invest our common-wealth to give the maximum benefit to everyone? To debate answers to these questions would be to analyse hundreds of years of politics, culture and history. I can’t pretend to be capable of doing that – and, ultimately I am not all that interested in the answers.
What I am passionate about is the situation that we find ourselves in just now, and what we, as a modern society, as a community of people, are going to do in facing up to our situation. We have created a massive and shameful gap between people with nothing and people with everything – and the gap is growing larger by the day. The terrible logic of this is that people seem to feel that they must hold tightly to the relatively little they have, a perverse culture of fear … ‘devil take the hindmost’… ‘I’m alright Jack’’. This fear actually supports the widening gap … whilst we are protecting our crumbs others are gleefully stashing away full cakes. But what if instead of fearing losing more – we were to build strength rather than merely try to stem a decline that we have been convinced is inevitable?
It seems to me that this is the root of current attitudes to ‘public money’ some people are so deeply wedded to this culture of acceptance of doom that they see any use of public money as either a ‘waste’ or ‘too little too late’ or ‘naïve’ or ‘corrupt’… may be such people have lost hope of improving their situation (or that of their neighbours) or they have a vested interest in the current status quo and seek to undermine any attempt to change it.
The truth is that Public Money (our common-wealth) is, along with our passion, spirit and creativity the most powerful tool we have for levelling the playing field of opportunity in our society. If we can create the opportunities for more people to achieve their potential everyone will be raised up together. Feeling pleased at seeing someone struggle is simply a mirror of your own struggle – by celebrating the growth of others we all grow together.
This is why I (and The Stove) am proud and humbled to be trusted with sums of public money. I feel the responsibility to extract every ounce of usefulness and benefit for my community. I see public money as an investment in our collective passion, spirit and creativity and a means of reaching out a supportive and compassionate hand. Public money can be smart and inventive, but above all it needs to be a force for equality, because only understanding ourselves as a community with the power to grow together will we have any chance of bridging the gap that threatens to destroy us all.
Maureen Farrell's letter in the Standard earlier this month
We were inspired recently by a letter into the local Standard newspaper from Maureen Farrell, looking at some of the locally led community projects and initiatives kicking off in Dumfries and calling for a push from agencies and larger organisations in the region to join a new movement of locally inspired positive change for Dumfries.
For those who missed it in the paper, on the 6th of February, we’ve decided to reproduce it here.
Thank you Maureen!
‘Having just enjoyed the delights that the Big Burns Supper brings to my home town of Dumfries has made me think that here was a homemade success story that was conceived by a local person, Graham Main, and brought to life by the hundreds of volunteers.
It brings the town to life in the dead of winter but, as well as entertaining us, it most importantly brings money and people into our region.
Kirstin McClure Rowe and Leah Halliday are working on a project to bring artists, makers and producers of crafts to the High Street to assist them in marketing their produce but especially to revive the High Street. By having a variety of talented people show their wares they hope to offer a range of unique products and help to market Dumfries as a town that people would want to visit.
At the moment Save Rosefield Mills is holding community consultation meetings to explore how we might rescue the beautiful mill in Troqueer that overlooks the Nith. Luke Moloney, Mark Zygadlo and Sheila Cameron are leading the battle. It would be such a failure if we let our heritage rot away. Again it is a local initiative led by local people.
The Stove is facilitating an attempt to bring housing and other services back to the Midsteeple Quarter. Matt Baker and fellow activists are leading this community-led initiative which would help in re-populating our wonderful Georgian High Street architecture.
Belle Doyle is leading an attempt to improve the rail connections between Dumfries and the central belt with the Dumfries Railway Action Group. This would not only improve our access to Glasgow and Edinburgh but it would also bring people flooding into this area.
These are all examples of local people doing it for themselves. These initiatives have sprung up now because people are tired of seeing the town of Dumfries fade away. We deserve something better.
There has been a lot of criticism of Dumfries and Galloway Council for not doing more but we have to remember that local government is being hammered by austerity and is struggling to fulfill its legal duties in the fields of education, social work, litter collection, planning etc.
Today I read an article by Aditya Chakrabortty about the regeneration of Preston, a town in Lancashire, which had problems similar to our own. Preston turned its fortunes around by spending locally. They call it Guerrilla Localism. [You can read the article in full here]
The local council, NHS and other big-spending organisations were persuaded to spend whatever monies they received from government in their local area, keeping the money circulating there and bringing more employment to the town and its surrounding area.
They did this by breaking down contracts that had to be tendered into amounts that local firms could provide. This increased the number of people locally who were in employment, they in turn spent their money locally and the town and surrounding area prospered. By having the courage to take the initiative local councilors in Preston rescued their town from fading away into obscurity. Who not Dumfries and Galloway, I thought.
I believe the examples I have outlined show that we have the people locally who are prepared to work energetically to make things happen. Now we need the local council, NHS and other agencies that are centrally funded to examine what they do with the considerable amount of money they do receive and make it work for Dumfries and Galloway.
Guerilla Localism could turn around the fortunes of Dumfries and Galloway.’
Maureen Farrell’s letter in the Standard earlier this month
