Words by Mia Osborne
The Creative Spaces Showcase is an opportunity every year for the Creative Spaces team to share the journey of their past 10 months whilst also spotlighting and celebrating the region’s young artists. This is done through an evening of inspiring talks, exhibitions and discussions about young creatives’ impact around the region.
Following on from a day of fringe activity all across Dumfries Town, this year’s main Showcase event took place at the Grainstore, a refurbished multi-use space tucked into the Town Centre. The evening’s audience was made up of both open tickets and allocated invites to organisations, partners and community members from across Dumfries & Galloway and beyond. Guests were welcomed with the hospitality of The Stove Cafe and were offered the chance to network with other creatives and browse the selection of exhibited creative pieces from young artists such as: Lily Ashton, Joseph Cursare, Trinity Coombs, and of course Creative Associates Anna Murray, James Gough and Sonah Chaudhry.
The night kicked off with a quick introduction from myself (Creative Spaces Producer) and then moved into the first half of the evening, the guest speakers:
First up, we were dazzled by 16 year-old rapper and performer, Joseph Cursare, who walked us through his journey of making music and finding his feet as an emerging rapper in his local town. Joseph had us in fits of laughter at his presentation, and I felt truly energised by his essence.
Next up, from Gatelawbridge in Upper Nithsdale, we welcomed the refreshing Trinity Coombs, whose mesmerizing documentary photography guided us on a journey along the Nith Valley. Trinity has a great love for the region which really shined in her presentation.
Following Trinity, Lucy Doig took centre stage to tell her story from childhood dress-up to acting school and everything in between. Lucy spoke about her impressive accolades throughout her career and introduced us to “Lament to the Lassies”, a passion project that started as a uni assignment (but more on this to come soon…).
Our penultimate guest joined us from sunny Stranraer, Savannah Crosby is a photographer and creative hub coordinator with Creative Stranraer, who moved us with her inspiring journey of artistic impression and mental health. There was not a dry eye in the house!
Lastly, we welcomed Will Austin, a local business owner, youth facilitator, kayaker, builder, creator and just all-round cool dude to talk us through his eclectic path, and his mission to integrate creative and nature-based learning into the curriculum. Will’s work with fellow young people shows the rich potential of an inspiring idea and heaps of determination.
Every year, we always include a short performance from a young creative as part of our showcasing activity, and this year, we re-introduced our audience to Lucy Doig, to perform her work-in-progress piece, ‘Lament tae the Lassies’; an immersive reframing of the perspective of Burn’s work, focusing on the forgotten women who played a part in Burn’s life. This moving feminist piece was truly mesmerising, and alongside being compelling in content, was also downright impressive in delivery.
This performance concluded the first half of the evening, and we then broke the night up with a short networking break. Before moving on to the second half, we introduced a sharing portion of the evening, inspired by Creative Dundee’s ‘Pass the Mic’. This gave the audience a chance to chat about any events, workshops, activities, ideas or opportunities to collaborate and share with a room full of people in order to plug their things or gain new audience members. We heard from a range of audience members, and this actually ended up being one of my favourite portions of the evening.
I then had the pleasure of introducing the final portion of the evening, the Creative Spaces Associates, James Gough, Sonah Chaudhry and Anna Murray. I knew the team had been building up to this moment for months, and were understandably very excited but nervous to share their journey, especially after the high calibre of guest speakers we hosted in the first half, however I knew they would knock it out of the park. We started with our first Spacer of the evening, James, followed then by Sonah and finally Anna. The three Creative Spaces team were incredible, and they used their platform to share not only their personal journeys to where they were today, but their journey throughout Creative Spaces, weaving together project work with professional development, which only highlighted the progress that they had all made throughout the past 10-months. The team also described in detail the personal projects they worked on throughout the past few months and how these projects impacted their personal and creative practice. You can read James, Anna & Sonah’s reflection pieces on their times at Creative Spaces here.
Every year I end the Showcase event feeling an overwhelming amount of pride in the work that we do, and the scene that we nurture. Every year this has become more and more evident by the people that walk through the door and the feedback they have given. The evening’s Showcase event was, in my opinion, a true reflection of the remarkable creative talent that we hold in Dumfries and Galloway, and the endless possibilities of our young people.
In a fitting end to this reflection of the evening’s event, it feels fitting to reiterate the thanks to the team behind it, for without these people, it would not be possible. Thank you to Sonah, Anna and James for the past 10-months, and all of your hard work, to the guest speakers Joseph, Trinity, Lucy, Savannah and Will for your inspiring presentations, to the Holywood Trust for continuing to support the project year after year, to Martin and the rest of the team at the Stove for all of your support over the past year, to DJ McDowall for your invaluable mentoring, to Wren, James, Anna, DMC and Martin for facilitating some amazing workshops throughout the day, to the production team, Sal & Meg for all your hard work executing the event, to Pam from the Stove Cafe for the bar & snacks, to Kirstin McEwan for photographing the event and to Tom and Louisa at Home Restaurant for letting us use their gorgeous space to host the Showcase event and of course thank you to all of you who came out on the night to support your creative scene.
