Tag: Dumfries
We’ve been busy gathering words for the Nithraid this week. When the boats arrive in the town on Saturday, 21 September, they will be greeted by The Stove’s huge fabric banners floating downstream from the Old Bridge, welcoming them to Dumfries with messages from the townspeople.
The #Nithraid discussions on Twitter and Facebook have arrived at ‘Three Words for Dumfries’ – as broad and as limited as it sounds. We’ve had some really interesting contributions.
Here’s a summary of the #Nithraid tweets and posts:
We’ll continue the discussion on Facebook and Twitter this week. Come along and join in!
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The Nithraid
Celebrate the Nithraid: Dumfries’ Annual River Race and Festival
From now till September, The Stove will be inviting people to contribute to an event that celebrates the River Nith’s importance – both historically and today. From its role as a trade route delivering economic lifeblood to Dumfries, to its significance as a conservation area, and to individuals and groups who find peace, tranquillity, and joy from its banks and passing moments.
Forming part of the Environmental Arts Festival Scotland, The Nithraid will culminate in a daring dinghy race from Carsethorn to the very centre of Dumfries on Saturday, 21st September. As the equinox pushes the tide to its annual peak, intrepid sailors will tackle the river head-on, surfing (maybe literally) the incoming tide to reach the finishing line at the Caul in Dumfries, where the salt water and fresh water meet.
When the boats arrive in the town, they will be greeted by a sculptured cow cast in salt and The Stove’s huge fabric banners floating downstream from the Old Bridge, welcoming them to Dumfries with messages from the townspeople. We would like your help writing those messages.
We’ll be decorating banners at community events in August and September and will turn to our social media channels for inspiration too. As we gather words and phrases, we’ll start to build a wall of words. Then our bicycle-powered poetry machine will mix them up and stick them together to form messages for our banners.
The Stove’s community fun day takes place in Lochside on Sunday, 18th August, and we hope to do a similar event in Dumfries town centre on Tuesday, 10th September. The social media initiative will kick off in August. Keep your eyes peeled for #NithRaid on Twitter and Facebook.
Our River Nith; the passenger, the deliverer, and the exporter. With untold tales from its length and breadth, and its historical depths. From its rise in the East Ayrshire hills to Ards Point, 15 miles south of Dumfries, where it meets the Solway Firth and greets the wider world – connecting the town locally, nationally, and globally.
The weekend saw The Stove Building come to life with the University of West of Scotland’s (UWS) Annual Student Showcase – running from 9am to 5pm on Saturday and Sunday.
The Showcase is an integral part of the BA Applied Enterprise (Creative Industries) students’ experience and provides an opportunity to come together and celebrate the fruits of the academic year.
It was pleasing to see the Stove Building being used by a group of very talented young adults who injected life and vibrancy into the building’s blank canvas.
Local folks, visitors to Dumfries, and those with a keen eye for emerging talent were given the opportunity to view the work and get to know a little bit more about what the UWS’s Dumfries campus has to offer.
As The Stove Network continues to formalise, grow, and develop, we look forward to welcoming the UWS back to the building in the future and hope to see similar initiatives taking inspiration from the weekend’s showcase.
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The Stove Presents: Art Shorts
Saturday, 4 May at 6.00 pm
The Stove Arts Collective presents a programme of short films by and about local (or local-ish) art and artists.
InBetween: Dumfries – As part of a national project exploring the role of the arts in shaping the future of market towns led by The Stove in collaboration with the University of Newcastle, five artists worked in and around Dumfries during 2012 to create works that examined place, identity, and belonging. This 15-minute film details the works created by Mike Inglis, Hannah Brackston, Suzanne Parry-John, Marion Preez, and Lisa Gallacher, with commentary by the artists.
Stonypath Days – Shot on 8mm film in 1973, this film by Professor Stephen Bann of Bristol University gives a rare insight into the early period of Little Sparta, the artist’s garden created by Ian Hamilton Finlay and his wife Sue at Stonypath in the Pentland Hills. Accompanied by a four-minute interview with their son Alec Finlay and contemporary views of the garden commissioned in 2012 by TATE Media.
The Eskdalemuir Harmonium – A US-built harmonium is disintegrating in a farmhouse near Lockerbie. An intimate visual exploration of a much-loved but decaying instrument, accompanied by an interview with its current owner, this short film by sound artist and filmmaker Chris Dooks is the result of his repeated ‘pilgrimages’ to visit the dying device.
Booking info: Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre, Mill Road, Dumfries DG2 7BE – Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Ticket prices are £6.30 (£4.70 conc), available from the Box Office (01387 264808) or at the door.
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Our Foundation Gathering
The ‘Foundation Gathering’ always sounded more like a cheesy Sci-Fi convention than an art event… The Stove’s ‘Foundation Gathering’ has now landed on Earth, complete with dry ice (or was that just folks breathing in the ‘bracing’ conditions?) and wobbly flying saucers.
More than 60 folks turned out on Wednesday – drawn by an invitation to come and be part of the future of the arts in the region by shaping the idea of a membership that will be at the heart of the organisation’s operation and decision-making.
Phil Jones (Business Development Manager) gave a welcome and defined The Stove as a project with the potential to be at the vanguard of a new genre of arts provision in Scotland – a social enterprise that aims to provide means for residents of Dumfries to play an active part in the future of their town.
Phil describes The Stove as ‘two things: 1) A Building – a fully accessible arts resource for the general public and creative practitioners… and 2) An Organisation – delivering participative public arts projects and undertaking commissions in the region and nationally
One of The Stove’s founding members, Colin Tennant, then gave a brief illustrated presentation of the work completed by the group to date and their plans for the future. To date, The Stove has delivered a highly successful programme of public arts events including ‘First Foot’ (part of Big Burns Supper 2012), ‘Punkin’ the Jubilee’ (Guid Nychburris 2012), and the Dumfries Music Conference – which brought industry professionals to the town to explain the contemporary digital music scene to the region’s young music entrepreneurs.
In 2013/14, The Stove will refurbish and open premises at 100 High Street as a public arts centre, complete a sculpture commission in Creetown, and work as one of three local partners delivering the inaugural Environmental Art Festival Scotland.
For the main part of the evening, Andrew Lyon of the International Futures Forum led a workshop that got people started working in small groups to make sculptures from a pile of recycled materials. Andrew’s organisation works to find creative ways of thinking about the future, and he asked groups to build a sculpture that illustrated the ideas and hopes they had for what The Stove could do for themselves and the wider community.
An amazing outpouring of creativity ensued, and groups then explained to others what their sculptures represented. Andrew Lyon then skilfully gathered all these ideas together into a creative discussion about how The Stove could operate as a democratic organisation with a membership, a board, and a ‘curatorial committee’. A general discussion followed, and 43 people signed up as the initial members of The Stove.
Membership is open to everyone and is free – if you would like to be a part of this innovative experiment in building a collaborative creative organisation for Dumfries and Galloway, then please send an email to [email protected], and you will be sent a membership form.
The first Stove AGM is set for mid-May 2013, where the members will be invited to elect a board to run the organisation on their behalf.
