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Musings

Goodbye Jenna!

Jenna Macrory

This month we say goodbye to Blueprint100 Curatorial Team Member Jenna Macrory as she ventures off to Newcastle to begin her degree in Traditional Music. She has written a few words discussing her experience of working at Blueprint100 and her journey through different projects. We wanted to say a huge thank you to Jenna for all her amazing work over the last 2 years – we will miss you!

Jenna Macrory

Starting this role in November 2016 following on from my Nithraid internship, Blueprint provided a natural progression. After Nithraid, I knew that I wanted to work in the arts but was lost as to what my next step should be. Blueprint100 provided a paid role to work and develop projects but also to work and develop myself as an artist. Through Blueprint, I was able to host events, workshops and experiences for young people and give back to my town.

As a musician I was able to explore other job prospects in the music industry like event management and sound engineering. Being able to explore these other routes of working within the creative industry is essential for young people today as in schools the focus is pushed so heavily on STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematic) based careers. This leaves a stigma that there are not viable career options within this sector, which is not true. It is absolutely essential that young people are made aware of this and also people that live in rural regions are able to access the arts.

Prior to working for blueprint I didn’t see much in Dumfries. I saw an anchor to my creativity but now as someone that is about to go to university in a city I don’t want to leave. Part of the magic of Dumfries is that is an unfinished project and getting to play a part in the development of Dumfries has been incredible and I’m very grateful that I was able to play a part in that. 

Looking forward I’m really excited to come back to Dumfries and Galloway and see where this town is. Projects like Midsteeple Quarter and Rosefield Mills are set to revitalise parts of the town which I believe will change the dynamics of the town and set us on track for the future.

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News

Meet Ruari – Music Stage Manager at this year’s Nithraid!

Earlier this month, we selected a young local musician to undertake music stage management at this year’s Nithraid River Festival on Saturday 11th August. Ruari Barber-Fleming from Castle Douglas has been selected to run the small acoustic stage that is held as part of the festival to showcase up and coming talent from around the region. The previous years have included regulars from the Stove’s monthly open mic nights, Brave New Words, as well as other musicians who are based within Dumfries & Galloway.

Ruari has been involved in the Dumfries music scene for several years now, having previously played in local band ‘Gracefell’ as well as photographing live music and working with various artists around the region. He is hoping that through this opportunity he will be able to deliver something unique for the visitors to Nithraid and believes that the stage is a great platform to showcase some local talent.

Ruari feels very positively about the music scene in Dumfries and feels it has been thriving the past few years with a gig frequency that is extremely impressive for the size of the region that it is. He is very passionate about originality and sincerity when it comes to live performance of music, and from this he hopes to be able to deliver just that – performances that the audience can latch on to and connect with the artist.

The commission will provide Ruari the opportunity to work with members of the Nithraid team to gain experience of all aspects of running a music stage at a festival including programming, design/build, marketing, sound engineering and equipment hire. There will be extra opportunities to integrate and learn through this commission with support from Euan Macrory, who undertook a similar internship in 2016 and now programs events both as part of the blueprint100 Curatorial Team and other festivals such as Moniaive Folk Festival.

The Nithraid music stage will be part of the ‘Nithraid Village’ situated on the Mill Green on Saturday 11th August and will run from 12pm until 4pm. Visitors to Nithraid are also invited to join in with other activities happening in the town and around the River Nith. The Salty Coo procession will kick off the day, leaving from Fountain Square on High Street at noon and arriving at the Mill Green at approximately 12.30pm. The Nithraid Village provides a jam-packed day of family friendly activities for all ages, which includes live music, food stalls and creative workshops which include stone carving, public art, zine making, upcycling, origami, badge making and recycling.

For more information, including how to take part in the races (or anything else!), please visit www.thestove.org/nithraid

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Musings News

The MooCoo Collective: Nithraid 2017

Blog post written by (and with thanks to) Jimmy Russell

Nithraid 2017’s Viking theme continues The Stove Network’s broader exploration of historic and current Nordic cultural influence in Dumfries & Galloway. In support of this Moovement Coollective (MooCoo) will be leading a procession of community groups with the Salty Coo through the town to meet the boat race and a Viking encampment at Mill Green. MooCoo is a newly formed performance trio comprised of Agnė Zdanavičiūtė, Jimmy Russell and Leo Marsh, three young artists living and working in Dumfries. The three members of MooCoo each bring something unique to the group.

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Inspiration for the MooCoo team comes in the form of CIRCA, the Clandestine Rebel Clown Army

Leo is a costume maker and performer who has worked with Oceanallover and often contributes to Brave New Words. Their work is rooted in vulnerability and connection, exploring topics such as sense of self and belonging through the lenses of gender and sexuality.
Jimmy is a researcher, writer and performer who has worked on the Our Norwegian Story and Lost Chronicles of Gallovidia projects, while regularly reading at Brave New Words. His interests lie in history, community empowerment and costume design, all of which find some outlet with Nithraid.
Agnė is a recent graduate in environmental science at the Crichton who is fascinated by public art interventions and wants to learn how to organise and deliver a performance. She also wants to challenge peoples’ ways of thinking and give something to Dumfries.

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For the procession MooCoo are fusing Viking lore with clowning sensibilities to create a spectacle at the river festival that combines heritage with silliness. In preparation we are coordinating different community groups that will process with us, including the Sandside Garden Apaches and Galloway Longfhada Vikings, as well as musicians and our fellow clowns. Our troupe of MooCoo clowns are benefiting from training by experienced rebel clown Lance Goodey from Glasgow who is delivering sessions at The Stove and Sandside Community Garden over two weekends.

During Nithraid 2017 we want to challenge the popular imagery of Vikings as bloodthirsty marauders with the reality that their presence in Galloway represented a surprisingly peaceful coexistence between different peoples. Rather than perpetuate the narrative that overseas invaders threaten our way of life, we wish to highlight the cultural exchange that did and still can exist in our homeland, not least with Norse folk. That is why our slogan for Nithraid 2017 is ‘We Come In Peace’.

Auõumbla: the primeval cow of Norse mythology who nourished herself by licking a salty glacier!
Auõumbla: the primeval cow of Norse mythology who nourished herself by licking a salty glacier!

In a predictably ridiculous fashion we’ll invoke the Nordic creation myth of Auðumbla: a primeval cow who nourished herself by licking salty glacier, which slowly released Búri, the first Norse god and grandfather of Odin. In turn Auðumbla’s milk nourished Ytar, a being whose body was used by Odin and the other gods to fashion Midgard, the realm of men. This story depicts creation as an ongoing and participatory process, a fitting message for Nithraid, which highlights the centuries old relationship between the river and Dumfries.

Clowning is something that has interested all three of us for some time. It seemed an interesting method of animating this myth and challenging typical tales of Vikingly violence. By adopting the dynamics of clowning – curiosity, engagement, presence, wonder – we want to inject a sense of fun and friendliness into local Viking lore, and invite people to question what they think they know about Norse-Gallovidian relations. The Nithraid procession will harness vulnerability to create a performance which is responsive to interactions and which blossoms in joyful, surprising directions.

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Musings

everybody is just a human being

Jordan Chisholm is a student at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland studying Contemporary Perfomance Practice. She is currently doing a placement at The Stove and writing a blog about her experience with us – this is her first post..

Jordan (with blue hair) performing in the Salty Coo performance (Nithraid 2016) she co-designed and produced with Dillon Colthard
Jordan (with blue hair) performing in the Salty Coo performance she co-designed and produced with Dillon Colthard for The Stove’s Nithraid 2016. Photo Kirstin McEwan

When I was thinking about where I wanted to do my placement for third year – I had no doubt in my mind that I wanted to do it in Dumfries. I moved to Dumfries, in 2012, when I was seventeen years old. When I left school, I had a university offer to do Criminology but I wasn’t entirely sure if this is what I wanted to do. My mum has stayed in Dumfries for around fourteen years and it was decided that I would move in with her, to be in a new environment with no one I knew.

I’d visited Dumfries many times at the weekends and over school holidays but living there on a daily basis was something extremely different. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the town. As an ‘outsider’ coming from Edinburgh; I felt as though I really did not belong in this beautiful space and I could not explain why. I guess this was something internal and I spent most of my first year living in Dumfries travelling back to Edinburgh; there was something I was not prepared to let go and starting a new life was not as simple as I had anticipated.

Time passed and I began to open my mind. I met new people and started to do new things. I began to explore Dumfries in a new way; it was like a playground – full of magic, wonder and uncertainty. I still feel much of that uncertainty today – over four years later. However, I am not scared by this anymore; instead it inspires me and it always leaves me wanting more.

Dumfries changed me. It changed the way I look at things, it changed my opinions, it gave me a platform to do things I never thought I was capable of doing, it gave me something to be passionate about, it allowed me to learn about myself and who I could be, it shaped my future, my hopes and my dreams; Dumfries changed my life. But could I change Dumfries?

When I think about what I may want to do in the future; giving something back to Dumfries is at the top of my list. You see, in this misunderstood town, where there may not be very much to do, there are hundreds of people who all share the same love and understanding of what this space really is. Dumfries has a strange pull to it; and this pull is of upmost importance to the future of the town. We have to work together to allow people to feel proud of where they come from – to make them want to stay. This is what I want to be a part of. A part of the regeneration of Dumfries through art, creativity and sheer hope. I want Dumfries to give everyone what it gave to me, and I don’t want them to have to look very hard to get what they are looking for.

The Stove Network is situated in the centre of Dumfries. It is a fully accessible public arts space/facility/resource for the population of the town and the wider region. It is a support network that creates opportunities and connections for the creative community and integrates with the local economy and wider society. One of The Stove’s aims is to use the arts to engage and empower people for themselves, the places they live and society at large. This aim is vital to my own learning and development; I knew that this was where I had to be for placement. I wanted to know how they manage to do what they do in a town that says no much more than it says yes. I wanted to live and breathe their commitment to the Dumfries community and I wanted to be around people who share the same desires as I do; who can show me how to make a positive difference with an understanding of the quality in process as well as the product.

Although I knew why I wanted to be at The Stove, I was still extremely nervous on my first day and I did not know what to expect. It reminded me of my earlier ‘outsider’ feelings but I pushed these to the side and arrived with no expectations as to how my first week may turn out.

I was met by curator, orchestrator and public artist; Matt Baker. The motivation for Matt’s work is to have an effect in the place for which it is made. I find it comforting and reassuring having the opportunity to be mentored by someone who vocalises that they became an artist to change the world.

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Musings

Blueprint100 Go to Edinburgh

From Emily Cooper – portraiture artist and blueprint100 Intern

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Earlier this month a group of intrepid Blueprint Members undertook an expedition to the frozen rain-soaked streets of Edinburgh in search of inspiration. Following an excited minibus journey we arrived at our first destination.

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Jupiter Art Land, a few miles outside of Edinburgh, hosts a vast array of large scale art pieces and indoor gallery exhibitions the first of which was the colourful and charming work Myth Cart by Hayley Tompkins, whose work did it’s best to brighten our spirits with its vivid display.

Soon though it was time to brave the weather and explore the grounds. We came across works from classical style structures such as Ian Hamilton Finley’s Temple of Apollo and Xth Muse, to the psychedelic Love Bomb by Marc Quinn.

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Particular favourites of the group were Weeping Girls by Laura Ford and Landscape with Gun and Tree by Cornelia Parker.

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Another thought provoking installation was In Memory by Nathan Coley a piece in which tall concrete walls surround a replica graveyard of apparently reclaimed gravestones.

All in all, despite the less than ideal weather conditions Jupiter Art Land proved to be a valuable and inspirational experience and certainly got our creative juices flowing and after something to warm us through in the onsite café it was time to head into Edinburgh and find our home for the night. The world’s first shipping container hotel! Some were excited…others were not.

As we pulled up into a slightly worse for wear, overgrown car park and were faced with the drab, grey corrugated iron walls, hearts began to sink and trepidation became rampant, however after hesitantly pushing open the gates, relief reigned supreme and what followed was a great night’s sleep in a warms comfy beds surrounded by friendly, colourful people. Our only regret was that we only had one night to stay.

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The following day began (somewhat late, after some difficulty navigating through the excessive crowds of fringe-time Edinburgh) with a trip to the pop up Arts Festival Hub to view the exhibition Platform followed by a guided tour of some other points off interest as part of the festival including the fountain of youth, created with the help of local school children!

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The rest if the day was free time to spend in whichever culturally education way we saw fit, for some that meant visiting the National Museum and exploring the various exhibits on offer whilst one group visited the National Portrait Gallery and experienced an impressive collection of self-portraits ranging from Matisse to Rembrandt.

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Art viewed, feet drenched and overpriced coffee consumed to excess, it was time for us to head home. A much quieter bus journey followed, interrupted only by the odd snore from the bus full of sleeping creatives. Thanks for having us Edinburgh, you were great…if a little exhausting!

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News Project Updates

blueprint100: an exhibition

blueprint100, The Stove’s emerging artist group have launched their mission for the Spring, to take over Glasgow! blueprint100: an exhibition, will run every Saturday from 12 noon to 4pm at On The Corner, a great wee venue near the Barras on London Road full of energy and enthusiasm.

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Artists taking part in the exhibition:
Emily Cooper
Sebastian Summers
Hayley Watson
Rhiannon Dewar
Jade Walters
Victoria Blackaby

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There will be a closing event to mark the end of the exhibition, details on this coming soon!

Huge thanks to exhibition co-ordinator Michael Moore, artist support Cate Ross, the emergency install team, and the fabulous guys and gals at On The Corner.

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