An activist space for members of the LGBTQIA+ community locally to get together, Queer Club is an opportunity for the queer community, its allies and advocates to conjure up big plans and get making.
The Open Hoose group hit the ground running, setting up and managing the 2022 Dumfries Pride festival in its first four months.
Dumfries Pride’s jam-packed programme of activity spanned the month of July, including a pop-up hub/shop (Queer Quarter) on the High Street, creative workshops, film nights, drag shows and so much more!
The Dumfries Pride calendar culminated in the celebratory and momentous Pride march around Dumfries town centre, with a masquerade ball taking place in the evening for all of the community to come together and celebrate an inspiring month of LGBTQ+ solidarity.
So what’s next for Queer Club?
As we’re now well into Autumn, Queer Club continues to host monthly meet-ups at The Stove, with plenty of fun activities to take part in, there really is something for everyone!
Queerbroidery: Take part in this mindful but fun activity, using embroidery to celebrate Queerness with fun and vibrant stitch patterns
Zine making: For lovers of collage and print, the Zine is one of the most accessible (and enjoyable) crafts you can do. Using old magazines, newspapers, photos and advertisements, the Zine is all about making, mending and transforming the old into the new, from the ordinary, comes the miraculous!
Beginner’s DJing with Double Down Disco: The art of DJing is all about weaving your own unique taste with that of the crowd. Read the room, blend the tunes and get moving. Get hands-on with the decks and try out the Stove’s Function One Sound System (it’s a beaut!), guided by the legendary Les Ross.
Book club: Read something of late you just HAVE to let others know about? Whether it was Wuthering Heights or the Bluthering Blows, we want to celebrate, educate and get inspired by queer, trans, non-binary and LGBTQ+ writers across the world. Bring along a book, whether a novel, non-fiction, poetry or comic and let’s get reading!
Queer Club is ran by, with, for and about the local LGBTQ+ community. It’s open to the wider community, whether advocate or ally, queer or questioning. It’s a safe, inclusive and friendly space for everyone to take part.
Interested in joining the Queer Club steering group? Then come along and speak with one of our members on the night. They’d be delighted to get to know you.
Join in the next Queer Club session by signing up via our events page, here.
Are you inspired by this Open Hoose group? Want to learn more about Open Hoose and find out how you can start or develop a project for the community? Check out our Open Hoose page for more information.
Solway to Svalbard is an immersive, multi-artform response to the spring migration of barnacle geese.
This unique piece of theatre brings together original music with cinematic visuals, evocative soundscapes, and live storytelling. Created by composer Stuart Macpherson, filmmaker Emma Dove and sound recordist Pete Smith the project was developed over the course of five years, enabled by support from Creative Scotland, PRS Foundation, Help Musicians UK, Tenk Traena AiR, Galleri Svalbard, DG Arts Live, The Stove Network, DGU and the National Theatre of Scotland’s Engine Room programme.
Forming part of Dumfries & Galloway’s Wild Goose Festival, which is produced by The Stove Network and held in Dumfries and surrounding areas, the festival unites key partners from the region in an exploration of nature, creativity, and place, Solway to Svalbard follows the migratory rough of Svalbard’s Barnacle geese from Southwest Scotland to the High Arctic and back. The final artwork is highlighted as this year’s finale event with the world premier will take place at the Loreburn Hall in Dumfries on Saturday 29th October.
“We have all put so much work into this project and I think we have really created something that not only gives audiences and insight into the geese’s journey but also the journey we have gone on as the friends in creating the work.”
Pete Smith – Sound Recordist
More About the Project
From their wintering site on the wetlands of the Solway Firth, through staging sites in Norway, to their breeding grounds in the High Arctic, the barnacle geese journey across shifting environments in search of food and safety. Following the geese on their journey were a team of three clunky humans who charted the flight path of these birds, encountering different communities along the way, seeking answers to their own questions of home and resources.
Solway to Svalbard is the culmination of the research, inspiration, documentation, ideas, thoughts, and feelings for these three collaborators and through their in-depth development, a richness of material has been generated that captures very special and intimate moments of the barnacle geese’s migration.
But where did is all begin?
“Fancy spending a couple of days filming and recording geese at the wetlands?” I don’t think any of us had any idea of the journey that we had just started when we got together for that initial reccie!”
Stuart MacPherson – Composer
The Solway Firth’ mudflats and coastal grasslands make up one of the largest intertidal habitats in the UK attracting tens of thousands of geese and other wildfowl and waders each autumn, the story of Solway to Svalbard stars here…
“Caerlaverock WWT was the first wildlife reserve I went to as a child. I remember ‘hiding in a hide’ and peeking out the small windows, looking at the vast numbers of grazing barnacle geese and listening to their noisy squabbling. It made a real impression on me, so, when Stuart first got in touch and asked me to come along on a recce for the project I jumped at the opportunity.”
Pete Smith – Sound Recordist
The development process of this project has encompassed research trips to the High Arctic, writing and filming sessions in the wetlands of the Solway Firth, writing residencies in Scotland and Norway, pop-up musical performances in Caerlaverock Castle and a work in progress performance in a working man’s club in Dumfries for the National Theatre of Scotland’s ‘Just Start Here’ festival.
Wide-shot panoramic footage of their journey evokes the scope and scale of the landscapes they travel through with close up environmental detailed shots. An immersive textured sound design weaves field recordings of the geese. Recorded interviews and stories recounted by local people in the Arctic and the Solway comment upon our integral but often forgotten interconnectedness with the natural world and the reality of environmental change on us all. An original score written as a response to the different environments and habitats weaves through the show. At the heart of the work – Stuart, Pete and Emma’s personal story – their account of navigating these people, places and landscapes and how their time with the geese changed and shifted their perspectives.
“When Stuart approached me to work on Solway to Svalbard, I felt an immediate connection to the piece. I naively imagined setting up my camera down on the Solway Firth and patiently waiting for skeins of geese to fly in perfect formations overhead. The reality really was much more of a wild goose chase – a lesson in our limits as clunky humans stuck to the ground, as well as an incredible journey of discovery of the places, habitats and people that are connected by the barnacle geese and their round trip to the high arctic.”
Emma Dove – Filmmaker
Image by Stuart Macpherson
Solway to Svalbard is a work about the natural world, our relationships with it. We’re currently living in a moment where a radical reconsideration of our relationship to our planet is required, and as gentle, tender, and intimate as the work is – it has never felt more urgent or necessary.
Audiences will learn about the geese, their habitat – what is changing and why that’s important. The barnacle geese are a conservation success story to celebrate but they are also an indicator species – their shifting behaviours and journeys pointing to rising temperatures and climate change. Above all, Solway to Svalbard is a work about feeling and connection. Immersed in the sights and sounds and movement of the geese and orchestrated by live music – audiences will be invited to feel their own interconnectedness with the natural world.
The Stove is delighted to launch the Open Hoose once again.
After a successful pilot between January to March 2022, where we worked with our community to realise 10 new projects and events ran with, for, by and about Doonhamers.
Open Hoose is a project at the very heart of the Stove’s community venue work. Working with us, new (and established) community-led, grassroots projects are given the space, support, resource, and training to take even the most radical of ideas to the next level. From bread-making groups, to LGBTQIA spaces, Climate activism and creative writing, Open Hoose is a supported project, tailored exactly to fit the individual (or group’s) aims.
Working with the Stove’s creative, production, café and technical teams, new initiatives are trialled and developed through our community venue programme. We have been able to provide free meals and drinks service, technical support, creative development and partnerships to help give ambitious ideas the space, time, support and encouragement they need to develop.
It’s pretty vital to what we do. We believe wholeheartedly that our culture is nourished from the grassroots, not from the top down. That’s why our motto ‘Grow your own culture’ is intrinsic to just about everything we do here, and Open Hoose is at the core of this.
Absolutely! We want to hear from as many people as possible. So whether you’ve never been to a Stove event or consider yourself a true Stovie, it doesn’t matter. We’re interested in you, your idea and why this opportunity is right for you.
Can a group that’s already established apply?
Yes. It doesn’t have to be a new idea. Established groups that are already working are encouraged to apply. So whether you’d like to have your activity in the town centre or could do with some support to try out something new, we’re all ears.
How many projects will be taken forward?
We want to be as flexible as possible with the type of support we might be able to offer. With our current cohort, we have identified spaces within our monthly programme for new Open Hoose projects to be considered, but we’re also open to hearing ideas that may not require the space, from podcasts to street art.
How do you consider proposals?
We take a broad and open view of the type of project we’re able to support. Though some key considerations are worth bearing in mind before submitting:
How does the project seek to engage with the community?
Is there a cause or activist drive behind the idea?
How realistically to support something given our current capacity and resources.
This past weekend, I found myself having lunch with a friend and a stranger. The friend, similarly to myself, is a filmmaker and facilitator of creative activities for young people in rural communities. The stranger, also a filmmaker and facilitator of both creative and career opportunities for young people, works in the South of Scotland, like my friend and myself (as I did up until recently).
The conversation over lunch meandered from our individual film practices, desires and influences, to creative opportunities for young people in the South of Scotland, and in rural Scotland more generally, to the role of arts organisations in tackling, or at least contributing to, the social issues that are so frequently found in rural spaces, and what responsibility art practitioners have to help.
Image by Rachel Shnapp
These are questions that, over the past year, have seeped into the conversations I have had with colleagues, mentors, and friends. Whilst programming events for young people, my team and I very quickly learned that the creative output really is not the goal of this work. What the goal is, though, is a very big question. More than that, it has hugely wide scoping answers. I’ll hazard a guess in saying that some of the aims are to create an environment for young people to explore their own creative practice, to experiment with the arts in various media, to have stimulating conversations with other people that may push the parameters of their perception of the world. But, of course, it’s a lot more than that. What some young people in rural communities lack is not simply the ability to create artworks, but safe spaces in which they can explore, grow and experiment. Where they can spend the long winter nights with friends out of the cold and the wind. Where they can be around people who will accept and support them for who they are, inclusive of any and all traits and qualities.
Of course, there is the need for young people to simply gather with others to creatively make and explore, but as it is said again and again, no art exists in a vacuum, nor does the creative facilitation that works on in the background behind the art. Young people also need all the things that society is not yet providing them with, and, whether it’s right or not, if some of that support comes from the creative community, then is that really such a bad thing? At least in that case, it’s coming from somewhere. Instead of shying away from the reality that arts organisations and practitioners have been and still are relied on to do developmental work, they should lean into it, finding organisational partners with the relevant expertise with whom they can mutually support each other to make change.
I was having lunch with my friend and a stranger, and once I’d left the café, I realised the conversation we had was one that, a year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to contribute to at all. I would have sat at the table shocked at these people’s’ knowledge of the rural art scene, the social issues being faced in rural Scotland, and their intersection. It’s easy to forget what we’ve learned once we’ve learned it. One year on since beginning Creative Spaces, I’ve learned more than I could have imagined about creative production, creative youth work, and the arts in rural spaces. I’ve learned more than I could have imagined about what it is to be a young person today in rural Scotland, independent of my own experience, and I’ve learned that being a creative practitioner (whether you identify as an artist or not), is rarely just about you and your work. As I said, we don’t create in a vacuum, we create in a world, a world that’s sadly riddled with social injustices. I think that if we can all play our part in seeing that world become a little bit safer for even a few people, then the world would be a better place altogether.
To me, good art is that which comes as close to the truth as possible.
It’s hard to ignore the truth when you’re looking right at it, and the truth is that Scotland, particularly its rural regions, have a lot of social issues that aren’t being addressed. I may not have a complete answer to the question I have posed, but I’m proud to be part of the conversation.
It’s easy, when initially developing a creative project, to let your dreams run away with you. When I first thought up the project that I would be developing within The Stove this winter, my plans were, on some scale, grandiose. I saw the project spanning across the region, inspiring five football teams (full size, not 5-a-side) of young people, who, like me, had grown up surrounded by the moss and the hills and the dry-stone dykes of Dumfries and Galloway, dreaming of clapper boards, dressed sets, and, let’s be honest, Hollywood* mystique (*note the two Ls.)
The project I was aiming to deliver was a series of screenwriting workshops with three groups of young people from the region who, on a national level, fell under the bracket of ‘rurally excluded’, each from a different geographical area of the region. (Aside: we could have a whole other conversation (and multiple debates) about the phrase ‘rurally excluded’ and its role within diversity and inclusion, but that’s for another time.)
My aim was to teach these three groups of young people how to construct short narrative films, focussing on naturalistic and localised film, and through this process co-write a script with each group, that I would then go and shoot.
I envisioned ending with a series of coming-of-age short films based within the region, telling stories that spoke to a generation of kids who rarely (if ever) see themselves on screen. This would combine my own practice as a director, and the work I had been doing for the past six months at The Stove in community arts. The thought of inspiring the aforementioned penta-football gang of local-next-generation screenwriters and filmmakers appealed to no end.
I’m going to do something you are generally not supposed to do in storytelling. I’m going to drop the spoiler in right at the second act:
I didn’t reach my expectations for this project. I’m going to do something else you are generally not supposed to do in storytelling: admit that I am an unreliable narrator. To say I didn’t reach my expectations for this project, would be telling only half the truth. The full truth, which sometimes we must wrestle with to discover, weed out of the proverbial pavement, is that my expectations shifted entirely throughout this project, and my initial goals, although in some ways not entirely met, paled in comparison to the happy accidents that shone through.
Due to various circumstances, I ended up only working with one group, of five young people, all from one town.
Firstly, with the impending threat of another Covid lockdown, all the schools I had hoped to work with were closing their doors to external visitors. Another group I had been introduced to were, sadly for me, not at all interested in screenwriting. Other pre-formed groups across the region had their spring schedules signed off well before Christmas, and were therefore unavailable. This singular group situation was not the geographically wide-ranging cinematic spectacular I had planned for. But within the confines of reality, I was able to spend more time and energy working with a group of young people who were determined, hard-working, and, truly benefited from the workshops in ways I had not at all anticipated.
(Disclaimer here: I definitely do not claim to take all the credit. I’m sure, without me, the group would have developed these skills in time on their own; and the team leading the group were making leaps and bounds with their photography and filmmaking abilities before I even stepped foot in the space.) But to see, first-hand, the benefit of having a space for young people to collaborate and work creatively, to try new ideas, and to (it seems so simple in hindsight) just be themselves, is more valuable than any evaluation procedure jargon I could have come up with in the first place.
This realisation, this eureka moment, is that what so many young people in rural communities really need is a space to hang out, to eat snacks with their friends out of the cold, dark Scottish winters, to truly be themselves around people who accept them and want to support them. A space to try out new ideas without the judgement of small-town-small-minds that can so often hold back anyone who does not conform entirely. I am definitely not the first person to make this realisation – I have seen colleagues in the region come to this conclusion and work tirelessly to provide these environments for the younger community. But to see it with my own eyes, up close, to be told by one of the young people that they feel ‘more at home here than at home’, to be able to contribute to that safe, comfortable space, where a young person is able to just be themselves. There’s nothing that could be more valuable, more inspiring, or more cinematic than that.
November: New Beginnings & Fond Memories at 100 High Street
November’s here! For all its drizzly driecht, soggy leaves and howling breeze, it’s all go for a month of dance and exhibition, climate chats and birthday celebrations!
But first…you might have heard about COP26.
Yes, the glitterati of global politics will be arriving in Glasgow, in all their blue blazered, shooder-pads and pouting. Not to mention the news crews and protestors, police vans and placards, it all feels a little bit nerve-wracking. (Yes, just what we need from this year, another thing to worry about!).
So while the whole wide world tumbles on to George Square and Kelvingrove, we want to ask; what does all this mean for us down here?
A Doonhamer’s Guide to the End of the World
Creative Spaces are hosting a series of conversations, workshops and creative activities for people under 30 to share, collaborate and make their ideas heard in the big climate conversation. Working with Historic Environment Scotland the programme explores climate through story and myth, unearthing our local history to see what lessons can be learned from our past to guide the future we’ve yet to take.
Alongside this, Reel To Real, the Stove Cafe’s monthly film night, will be screening two films exploring climate, loss, distance and relocation, from Africa to Ireland. Our Reel To Real film nights include some scrumptious pre-movie scran courtesy of stew-maestro Marcus, from 5PM through till 6:30!
First beginning in June of 2019, Atlas Pandemica: Maps to a Kinder World is a compendium of 10 projects led by Dumfries & Galloway based creative people exploring different themes highlighted by life during the COVID pandemic, working directly with people in the region, it focussed on the impacts and learning from the community’s experience of the evolving pandemic.
The project is now drawing to a conclusion, aside from the many outputs each of the commissioned artists have shared, a collection of 10 maps, based on each of the project’s findings will be unveiled as part of ‘After the Pandemic’, Glasgow’s creative and cultural fringe at COP26. For more information on the project please visit www.atlaspandemica.org
Are ye dancin? We’re askin!
Join us on Saturday 6th November for an intimate evening of dance performance and conversation as DG Dance celebrate the end of their first season touring pop up dance across Dumfries and Galloway.
Martin McKeown, taken as part of Sanquhar Arts Festival.
The evening will include a performance of Matthew Hawkin’s Triple Echo, sharing excerpts from new screendance research with Emma Dove inspired by Emma Jayne Park’s touring performance And Now We Unravel, Again, and a performance of Louise Ahl’s newly premiered work heartbeats, fresh air, gestures, time.
This will be followed by an open conversation with lead artist Emma Jayne Park, and company dancers Claire Pencak, Jorja Follina and Malcolm Sutherland.
The following week, we’ll be showcasing the final UK screening of Penny Chivas’s ‘Burnt Out‘ this year, followed by an opportunity to discuss the work with the artist.
Brian Hartley
With original music by Paul Michael Henry, interwoven with the delicately detailed lighting design of David Bowes, this is an autobiographical dance-theatre work from the daughter of an environmental geochemist, bringing together fact and personal account. ‘Burnt Out’ is at once an intimate personal story and a universal meditation on our changing climate.
The Dumfries Fountain Project: Research & Studio Work
A pop-up exhibition at The Smithy, 113-115 High Street, hosted by artist Alex Allan. Allan has been working with the Dumfries Fountain Project coordinated by the Stove Network, exploring, and designing a proposal for a permanent piece of public art to be situated by the Dumfries Fountain to complement the historic landmark.
You are invited to consider the research gathered during their time in Dumfries, experiment and play with ideas and materials from the studio and contribute your own thoughts to the work. What would you like from a new piece of public art in the centre of the town? This is a unique chance to hear from the artist themselves and learn more about this timely and fascinating project. Come on in!
Dumfries Fountain Project: Film and Soundtrack Premiere
The Smithy, 113-115 High Street Saturday, 13 th November 5-7pm
Join us for a celebratory evening marking the conclusion of our two Holywood Trust commissioned artist projects, with a sharing of the short documentary film created by filmmaker Patrick Rooney, and film soundtrack by musician and composer Jenna Macrory.
After the screening we’ll be hearing from our two commissioned artists about their experiences with the project. Light refreshments provided. There is limited capacity available for the event so please sign up via Eventbrite to let us know if you would like to attend.
Can you believe we’re 10 years old? Seems like just yesterday, the Stove were chalk painting flagstones and launching a coo into the Nith (not an actual coo, don’t fret).
10 Year Celebrations
Join the Stove as we celebrate our 10th Birthday! We’ll be turning the Stove Cafe into a t-shirt printing factory where you can print your own 10th Anniversary t-shirt, and the cafe will be open with a special menu (yes, there will be cake!).
Our pals Dave Bass and the magnificent Dumfries Music Collective, fresh off the heels from their stellar 2021 conference are finally back to takeover the Stove Cafe with the U18 Acoustic Cafe. Featuring a line-up of fresh voices from the region, the afternoon is open to all to enjoy. More info coming soon!
Doughlicious
D’ough! Doughlicious are back in the building! Share ideas and recipes whilst breaking bread with like-minded folks. Featuring practical workshops exploring techniques and style, for those that kneed that extra bit of help and radical recipes for aficionados, from chapati to brioche!
Women Signwriters Assemble!
Dumfries Women’s Signwriting Squad are back again with the wee monthly meet-up. This session, open to beginners of all levels, will teach you the basics of signwriting. A popular event so sign up to guarantee your spot!
It’s not as gloom as it sounds, we promise. Dark Time is our yearly switch off, where we re-group as a team, drink too much coffee and chat all things Stove. From planning 2022, pouring over our members feedback (thanks by the way) and reflecting on a year unlike any other.
As we draw some breath from the run of festivals and projects, from wild geese to multiverses, we’re making time to ask some important questions. From who uses the Stove, to what we can offer our community and what themes might take us forward into the new year. We divide our conversations into three areas, which include:
Are you interested in Dark Time? Let us know by emailing [email protected].
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