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Our Norwegian Story – exploring cultural connections at The Stove

As Scotland continues its fascination with Nordic culture, The Stove Network in Dumfries has received funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund for their project, Our Norwegian Story, which will map a trail through Dumfries’ town centre celebrating its links with Norway during WWII. This is another example of a local arts project being successful in bringing national investment to the area to create activity in the town centre for the benefit of local people and businesses. The Stove has been awarded funding by Heritage Lottery Fund for a series of public events highlighting ‘Our Norwegian Story’
During WWII Dumfries’ population was nearly 20% Norwegian harbouring the headquarters for Norwegians in exile and as a result became the birthplace of the Scottish Norwegian Society we know today.

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Norway House, or Norges Hus in Dumfries. Note the shot down German tail fin attached to the front of the building.

The project comprises of a series of imaginative public events, led by the artists of The Stove Network, that create opportunities for Dumfries to tell its Norwegian Story. Work begins with participation in Dumfries Museum’s Viking event Summer Wandering on Saturday May 14th when The Stove building becomes Norway for the day. June will see a Norwegian Market as part of the town’s Guid Nychburris celebrations. Other events planned to highlight this important relationship include football in the town square hosted by local club Greystone Rovers, Norwegian skill-share and story-telling events, musical composition workshops, performance, creative mapping, as well as the launch of the Norwegian Trail itself in March 2017.
Working with research and design collective Lateral North the project will use this important part of Scotland’s history for people to learn about the stories of our past in a way that can also help re-imagine our future and connect to the wider Nordic Scottish Connection.

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Project Leader Katharine Wheeler says, “We are very excited to have received funding for this project and be able to start our programme of events. It allows us to record, preserve and learn about this part of Dumfries’s story in a contemporary context as well help to re-establish connections with Norway providing exciting new cultural opportunities”
Stories and memorabilia gathered during the life of the project will be included in an online archive to provide a lasting legacy for future generations to access and share. The trail itself will be an interactive app that guides local residents and visitors around places of particular significance, learning about this part of history in a fun and contemporary context.

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The Stove Network are currently seeking a creative practitioner to work on Our Norwegian Story on a ‘Research-Led Residency Commission’ – details on how to apply available here
Anyone wishes to find out more about the project and its calendar of events should contact Katharine Wheeler at [email protected] or call 01387 252435.

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Making Dumfries – Part 1

Week beginning 28th March sees the Stove welcome the Scottish Year of Architecture, Innovation and Design into our world with a series of events and activity, as the first part of an ongoing project, Making Dumfries. Over the course of the next few months, Making Dumfries will create opportunities to contribute to the development of a new vision for the town centre, with workshops facilitated by leading local designers and cultural groups, of which our events are the starting point of.

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Square Go
Tuesday 29th and Wednesday 30th of March 10am – 4pm daily
Join the Stove alongside a team of local architects, artists and planners in creating a giant pavement drawing re-imagining the town centre – whatever your interests. How would you like to experience Dumfries in the future? As part of Square Go, the Glasgow Institute of Architects will set up the travelling pavilion, Eolas in the square which will be the HQ for our Square Go project, drop by and get involved.
If you are interesting in participating in the development of this project there are more details available here

Possible Scotland
Tuesday 29th and Wednesday 30th of March Lateral North’s touring project, Possible Scotland will visit Dumfries as it travels around Scotland in 2016 to support and work with the Square Go project. Join the team for an open workshop on Wednesday, from 2 – 5pm.

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Scottish Scenic Route exhibition
28th March – 8th April
From the 28th of March, the Stove will host the Scottish Scenic Route exhibition, a project exploring the impact and possibility of small architectural interventions along Scotland’s key tourist routes.

Film Premiere
Tuesday 29th March 7pm
The premiere of a specially comissioned film by artist and filmmaker, John Wallace exploring the history and culture of Dumfries High Street. The screening will be accompanied by talks and discussions on the past and future of the High Street. All welcome.

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Incoming… 2016 at The Stove

What’s in store at The Stove this year? With building works continuing downstairs in The Stove this month ahead of our regular opening times from next month, the Stove’s operations and curatorial teams are busy preparing and planning for a bumper 2016 year. Select each image below for more details.

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Musings News

We Live With Water

SUBMERGE offered The Stove the opportunity to imagine a Dumfries of the future—a future predicted to be up to twice as wet by the end of this century.

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As we prepared for SUBMERGE, our local council unanimously voted for a plan to build a physical structure along the edge of the River Nith, aiming to hold back the surges in this spate river and prevent the flooding that has been a feature of the town since records began. Hard as we searched, we could not identify the longer-term vision for the town that the barrier plan was intended to align with—how did the barrier contribute to a future for Dumfries, we wondered? The only answer we could ascertain was that it aimed to make a small area of the town more attractive to property developers. The strategy of attempting to attract private investment to revitalise the town has been the mantra for the past 20 years; however, it has not been successful and appears increasingly questionable amid the decline of 20th-century capitalism, which is failing to deliver well-being for the majority of the population in Scotland.

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The Stove issued a call for people to join a group that would take an alternative approach and imagine a future where increased rainfall, sea levels, and river surges could be seen as an opportunity. We sought to reimagine Dumfries as a River Town—a place that embraced its environment, a place that Lives With Water.

River-Nith

In this plan, the banks of the River Nith are rewilded as riverbank through the centre of town. These new spaces are integrated with existing green spaces adjacent to the river to create a green corridor along the Nith, which is utilised for a combination of food and energy production, leisure, culture, and education.

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“The commercial district of the town centre is condensed and centres on its traditional functions: serving as a market for local producers, a meeting place, and a centre for culture and heritage. As the transport hub for the region, Dumfries acts as the gateway linking national and international relations to the broader region of South West Scotland.

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The area immediately surrounding the High Street and Market Square is converted to residential use, with urban smallholders and makers capitalising on the proximity to the market for their excess production, bringing vitality to the town centre throughout the day and night.

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This vision was presented in a document titled ‘We Live With Water’, which was written from the vantage point of Dumfries in 2065 and featured commentaries by local writers reflecting on the future from a retrospective perspective.

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Richard Arkless MP visited his constituents in Dumfries on Monday, 7th December 2015, to inspect the aftermath of the flooding from the previous weekend. During his visit, he heard rumours of an alternative plan for the town and the river and obtained a copy of We Live With Water to take back to Westminster as a potential way forward for our town.

Richard-Arkless

We Live With Water was coordinated by The Stove Network and included contributions from:

Katie Anderson
Kate Foster
Rita Pacheco
Alyne Jones
David Slater
Mike Bonaventura
Lee McQueen
Matt Baker
Mark Zygadlo
Ivor Gott
Stuart White
Mary Smith
Lauren Soutar
Rhiannon Dewar
Linda Powell
Katharine Wheeler
(and some anonymous writers)

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Musings News

Quest 3 at SUBMERGE

“Quest” is an ongoing environmental project by artist Jan Hogarth, exploring our relationship with the environment, land, and water. Jan’s working practice grows out of a deep love of the land (in the broadest sense of the word—by “land” I mean water, trees, animals, mountains, etc.), an empathy for it, and a deep desire to heal it. Jan has been working with Sheila Pollock, a practitioner in the healing arts for over 30 years, and invites others who love the land to become involved in the environmental art quests.

In Celtic tradition, healing wells, springs, and the sources of rivers were thought to possess sacred and healing properties.

“Quest” explores rituals and the truths behind them to create and invent new environmental art rituals aimed at healing the environment. The idea of searching for the source of the Nith originated from a local rumour that the Lynors of Dumfries Guid Nychburris took spring water from the source of the Nith and carried it with them when they rode the boundaries of the town. My friend Sheila, who has been working in the healing arts, and I went in search of the source of the Nith, which is located at Dalmellington in Ayrshire. Instead, we found an environmental catastrophe in the form of open-cast mines and landfill sites, with no access to the source due to the activities of the open-cast mine operators. It was shocking—how could this river be healed when its source serves as an example of how we take from the land without empathy for our energy consumption? This seemed to act as a metaphor for the wider issue of climate change. The problem lies with us—our lack of love for non-human life and our lack of reverence for nature, water, and the land.

Sheila has worked with Jan on the Quests project, focusing on the energy of water and its places, and exploring how to lift that energy and raise its vibration. Through dowsing, there is evidence that the vibration of the water she worked on during Quest 1 was raised, and that improvement has been sustained. The Nith presents a significant challenge due to its source in an open-cast mine. Sheila and Jan will be discussing this on Thursday evening at the Stove as part of their work.

Jan’s install in preparation for SUBMERGE

Quest is part of SUBMERGE, an exhibition featured in ArtCOP Dumfries, running daily from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm until Saturday, 12th December.

Jan and Sheila will be discussing Quest as part of A Question of Scale

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Norway House

At the beginning of the month, The Stove transformed into Norway House as part of a project with the research and design collective Lateral North. Over the course of three days, The Stove became a temporary hub, exploring Dumfries’ Norwegian connection.

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Norway House at The Stove became a place for exchange and conversation, storytelling, and remembering.

Many visitors came in, sharing memories of the excitement they felt as children, aged seven or eight, when the Norwegians arrived. They recalled how the Norwegians would sometimes offer lifts to children on their way back to their accommodation, which was in various places around Dumfries. Most stayed at the Troqueer Mills, although there was also a farm on the outskirts of Dumfries, near Lincluden, where the horses were kept.

One lady spoke about her husband, who had lived at 7 Nellieville Terrace as a boy. Their front room was used as the Norwegian Bank, and he remembered the King visiting his home. He often talked about the Norwegians’ visit. The family had hoped to record or share his memories before he passed away but sadly never managed to. I will now pass her details on to Beverly Thom, who is writing a book of these stories so that his memories can hopefully be documented.

The manager of the Greyston Rovers also visited. He explained that they have been playing Norway regularly since 1951, when they became the first team to play in Europe after the end of the war, maintaining the connection.

Norway House is part of an ongoing project, Cultural Wayfinding, which explores alternative ways of understanding and celebrating Dumfries’ culture and history. The project also aims to build new connections with Norway in the future.

If you would like to stay updated on the project as it develops, or if you would like to contribute your story to our growing Norway House project, please contact Katharine at [email protected].

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