The Stove Needs Your Help!

The Stove is organising itself properly for the future and needs your help to do this – we’re inviting people interested in the arts in Dumfries and Galloway to join us for an informal evening to share their thoughts on our performance so far and how we can improve in the future. After agreeing on a way forward, everyone will be offered free membership of The Stove.

You might wonder how this relates to you?

We believe The Stove can make a genuine contribution to the future of our region – benefiting both the creative sector and the wider population.

How does this involve you?

The Stove is two things:

A Building

you need to come to this gathering if:

You’d like to see a place in the centre of Dumfries where you can meet other creative individuals, get information about what is going on locally and further afield.
You’d like to be able to hire affordable space to hold workshops/events.
You’d like to present or perform in a space dedicated to multi-disciplinary contemporary arts.
You’d like to rent a small serviced space in the centre of Dumfries.
You’re interested in joining the artist team to work on a series of commissions that will be integrated into the building.
You want to know about the progress with the building (we aim to have completed the necessary building work by the end of 2023).

An Organisation

You should come along if you are interested in:

Collaborating with other artists as part of teams to take on large commissions.
Bringing forward new ideas for projects/initiatives that require an ‘organisation’ to carry them forward. Note: One of The Stove’s rules is, ‘If you have an idea, you need to be prepared to implement it yourself.’
Joining forces if you represent an organisation and are looking to collaborate and share resources/expertise.
Learning new skills by participating in Stove projects.
Building a creative career in Dumfries and Galloway.
Supporting early-career individuals to get started locally.
Enhancing the arts scene in Dumfries and Galloway.
Collaborating with the creative sector in your work, even if you are not part of it, as we offer valuable assistance.

The aim is to find a creative solution that works for all of us to set up The Stove as the best thing it can be. By attending, you will have the opportunity to integrate yourself into the Stove network from the beginning of this exciting new phase of the venture.

You do not need any expertise of any kind to take part – just enthusiasm and an open mind and heart.

Informal workshop led by Andrew Lyon until 7:30 PM, with refreshments and chat afterwards.

Please RSVP to [email protected] to help us estimate attendance numbers.

My childhood was spent in Galloway. Its hills, rivers, and tidal flats formed my understanding and love of the natural world. The biblical stories I learned before I could read mixed freely with the tales and legends I learned about the land around me to the point that Galilee and Galloway were one and the same. Was it the boy David who confronted Goliath at Loch Trool, or was it Robert the Bruce who faced the Philistines on the banks of the Jordan? When I learned about Saint Ninian landing at the Isle of Whithorn, bringing Christianity to our heathen forefathers, I assumed he was one of the Apostles and that he had just sailed across that Sea of Galilee. As for Tam o’ Shanter, was he Old or New Testament?

At the age of 11, my family moved away. But that heady brew of wild landscape, biblical stories, poetry, a sense that one was put on earth to do the right thing, and the temptations of the flesh—which were always at hand—has infiltrated and informed everything that I have done or attempted to do since. And then, of course, there was the work ethic.

And on the subject of work, everything I have done since the late 1990s has been framed within the context of The Penkiln Burn. This, in one sense, is an old-fashioned publishing house and, in another, an online brand as an artwork. The Penkiln Burn is also a small river that rises in the Galloway Hills and flows down into the River Cree at Minnigaff. It was on the banks of the Penkiln Burn that many of my boyhood adventures took place, a place that still fires my imagination to this day.

I am aware that if I had spent my teenage years in Galloway, my sense of it would be totally different, and that I would probably have viewed it as a cultural backwater that I could not wait to escape. But that was not the case.

As for Dumfries, that was another country altogether.

By Bill Drummond, 3 October 2012.

A truly memorable film of Parton to Kirkcowan by way of Newton Stewart aboard a steam train way back in 1965 – accompanied by the track ‘Madrugada Eterna’ by The KLF.

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