Conversing Building X Abbey Camera Club: Spring Exhibition

May 10 @ 9:00 am May 27 @ 3:00 pm

The Stove Cafe are delighted to be welcoming back Abbey Camera Club for this month’s exhibition. Bringing an eclectic variety of images, the club will host an open collection of styles and themes for the display. The images at the Spring Exhibition are those selected by members as being amongst their personal favourites taken over the past year. Please note that many of the images exhibited were taken on phones.

Drop in during regular cafe hours for a closer look!

About Abbey Camera Club

Abbey Camera Club is a photographic society based in Dumfries, with a membership ranging from beginner to the professional. Formed in 2003, the club meets in St. Andrew’s Church Hall, Brooke Street and offers a variety of activities including talks, photogenic excursions, and competitions. Ultimately, our aim is to encourage and support anyone with an interest in photography. Further information can be found HERE.

About Conversing Building

Conversing Building is an on-going project as part of the Stove’s core activity that explores how projects, artists and community groups can interact with the Stove building and environments through visual displays, installations, and exhibitions. Conversing Building considers all the spaces in and around the Stove as potential locations for dialogue, activity and gathering.

Free

View Organiser Website

100 High Street
Dumfries, DG1 2BJ United Kingdom
01387 252435
View Venue Website

Access Information: Level Access in rear of building through adjacent close to left-hand side of the Cafe (facing the front of the building). To ensure your experience with us is as best as it can be, please do let us know if you have any specific access requirements and we’d be happy to help. Please email Kevin or Sal on: [email protected] or phone 01387 252435 and speak with one of our team. We are able to provide walk-throughs of the building before attending our events as well as assign seating before your arrival. 

Conversing Building x Access Art: A Tree, A Forest

April 24 @ 9:00 am May 6 @ 3:00 pm

AccessArt – Learning Disability Week Exhibition – A Tree, A Forest. 

This month’s cafe exhibition has been created by AccessArt as part of our Conversing Building programme. AccessArt has been part of the creative community of Dumfries and Galloway for the past 20 years, facilitating creative opportunities for individuals and communities who have experienced barriers to inclusion.

Our commitment to this continues through our program of sessions & workshops we deliver out of the Gracefield Arts Centre in Dumfries.

This year the theme for Learning Disability Weeks is “lead to change.” Having thought about this and what leadership means to us as a group and individually, we found the term “Nothing for us without us.” It brought together the groups feelings about being included in the decisions made that affects their lives.

We wanted to create an artwork that dealt with a representation of “us,” while retaining the idea that we are all individuals. From nature we found our inspiration; the motif of a tree. A single tree becomes a forest when repeated. This idea spoke to us about being connected through our shared experiences and the power of a collective voice.

Our collaborative artwork has taken the form of a collage, in which each participant has added their interpretation of a tree/s. 
As participants added more trees, relationships formed between these differing elements, creating new and unexpected narratives within the collage. Alongside it are supporting artworks to show the development of our ideas.

“At AccessArt we are inclusive, adaptable, creative left-field thinkers, who see through potential barriers to participation, who provide a safe non-judgemental space with the appropriate levels of support with a good amount of encouragement.”

The artworks will be on display from the 24th of April to the 6th of May, open during The Stove cafe hours.

100 High Street
Dumfries, DG1 2BJ United Kingdom
01387 252435
View Venue Website

Level Access in rear of building through adjacent close to left-hand side of the Cafe (facing the front of the building). To ensure your experience with us is as best as it can be, please do let us know if you have any specific access requirements and we’d be happy to help. Please email Kevin or Sal on: [email protected] or phone 01387 252435 and speak with one of our team. We are able to provide walk-throughs of the building before attending our events as well as assign seating before your arrival.

The Stove Cafe x Conversing Building Present: Hidden Dumfries

February 20 @ 9:00 am March 4 @ 3:00 pm

Photography Exhibition by David Moyes

Charity Sale in support of Suicide Bereavement Support

This exhibition presents photographs of the architecture and the seascapes of Dumfries and Galloway.

The pictures show a different perspective on our architecture, and the movement of the water around our beaches.

The photographs reveal aspects of our buildings and our beaches which are perhaps less often noticed. All of the photographs are offered for sale and all of the money raised through sales and donations will go to support the charity Suicide Bereavement Support.

Suicide is a major cause of death, particularly among young people. This charity provides care and help to people who have lost loved ones through suicide, and training to those whose job requires them to inform people about their loss, working across Cumbria, SouthScotland and Lancashire.

Information about the charity, and details of its ‘Just Giving’ page will be available within the Stove cafe.The exhibition will be available to view and purchase during regular cafe hours, 9am-3pm Monday toSaturday.

All are welcome to join us for this opening evening on Tuesday 21st February from 6-8pm.

David and the Stove would like to thank the sponsors of this exhibition:

  • Dumfries Camera Club
  • Dumfries Devorgilla Rotary Club
  • The People’s Project
100 High Street
Dumfries, DG1 2BJ United Kingdom
01387 252435
View Venue Website
Categories
News Opportunities

Cafe – Community – Creativity: Exhibition Call Out

The Stove Cafe x Conversing Building

We’ve spent more time at home than we ever thought we would. What sorts of things did you get up to during the past 14 months? Maybe you started painting again, or learned how to knit, or made collages to send to your friends or started taking photographs on your phone. We’d love to celebrate the little acts of creativity we have all made at home, and share them in our café.

The Stove Café and the Conversing Building project would like you to submit or loan your artworks to us for a Community Café Exhibition in June 2021. Works can be 2D or 3D, measuring no more than 60cm in any direction please. All artworks will be displayed in our public café so please make sure that the work you submit is suitable for all ages.

How to Submit

Artworks can be dropped off to The Stove Café during regular opening hours Wed-Sat, 10-3pm, but please make sure you have included your contact details so that we can return your work to you. If we receive a large number of submissions we may not be able to display all works. Please do not submit more than two artworks per person.

If you have any queries about whether your creative work will be suitable, please drop us an email to [email protected], or pop into the Stove café and ask one of our team.

All artworks must be submitted by Monday 31st May 2021.

The exhibition will run from the 2nd to the 30th June 2021.

Categories
Musings News

2021: The Stove at 10 Years

‘For me, the question of democracy also opens up the question of what does it mean to be truly human. And it seems to me that we need to recognize that to develop the best humanity, the best spirit, the best community, there needs to be discipline, practices of exploring. How do you do that? How do we work together? How do we talk together in ways that will open up our best capacities and our best gifts?’

Vincent Harding

Looking back, looking forward

Our first foot into the New Year might seem like little has changed. With a new spike rolling in with the first snowfall of January, a third lockdown begins. And as we huddle further into our little worlds the news cycle spins and bounces off the walls with the discovery of a vaccine. And for now, we carry on.

2021 marks ten years of the Stove’s work. And we’re immensely proud of what’s been achieved in that time; from festivals and events to community buy-outs and river races. Together with our community, we’ve shaped a new vision not only for the arts but also for the vital role that communities and creativity play in the shaping of our town.

This year, we’re focused on sharing and learning together again so that we can build and support new and ambitious ideas from the voices hitherto unheard across the region.

As of December, the Stove has been focused on building a programme of new projects that will allow us to delve deeper into connecting communities, ideas and creativity together. We want to build new connections, routes and opportunities for learning across our membership and wider region.

This year we want to discover new voices, train and support new ideas as well as deepen our relationship to the places beyond the town center.

We will do this by:

  • Creating new spaces for people to learn, share and take part in conversations to map the future of our region.
  • Continuing to explore and promote bold and innovative projects that connect people in a time of social isolation.
  • Finding the new stories and storytellers to help us navigate a world spinning further out of reach.
  • Focusing on localism and power by providing the tools necessary for communities to realise and shape their identities and futures.

Our programme will stretch across sharing skills in digital communication to help communities and artists reach further and more meaningfully to people, regional projects to support bold ideas concerned with community ownership and place-making and a responsive series of events and conversations open to all.

We are committed to exploring, developing and sharing how we work with other places and people and to continue the conversation online through our new podcast channel and other outlets.

Throughout January the Stove will be planning and organizing for the year ahead, so we encourage you to keep an eye on our website and social media for announcements, job opportunities and activity.

We’d like to once again thank our membership and community who have helped to shape our ideas for the year ahead by taking part in our projects, events, consultations and conversations throughout 2020.

And to celebrate ten years of the Stove we’ll be sharing the stories of those who have come through our doors, sharing their favourite memories as well as finding out what lies next for us over the next 10 years.

Whilst the road ahead looks rough, we’re hopeful our work will cement a new vision of community and creativity that seeks to support a fairer society for all. We can’t wait to see what comes of it.

Categories
News

Elsewhere: First Images

Thank you to everyone who took some time to visit Elsewhere last weekend, it filled us with hope to see the town again from fresh perspectives and in new lights.

The first of our images from the weekend are now available, thanks to photographer Kirstin McEwan.

If you weren’t able to attend in person, much of the wonderful work we included as part of Elsewhere is available to view online, see a selection of links below.

Elsewhere was supported by Dumfries and Galloway Council’s Regional Arts Fund.

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