What started off last Autumn as part of Mapping Our Norwegian Story workshops has taken on a life of its own through the Stitching Our Story open stitching sessions – artist Deirdre Nelson joined the ONS team to kick start a series of hand stitched maps of Dumfries, which have now been adopted by local historian Alyne Jones and the Dumfries Embroiderer’s Guild in a fast growing project to map contemporary Dumfries through the stories and histories of the town.
The Norwegian connections are mapped out across the 20 panels that make up the map, along with other significant and personal places – local schools, homes, historical sites and transport links all feature.
Following on from successful evening workshops in February, Stitching Our Story continues into March, and all are welcome to stop in to the Stove cafe and add their own mark to the map. First drawn and then stitched over, everyone is welcome – Norwegian connections or otherwise – from experienced sewers to beginners.
Stitching Our Story is part of our ongoing Our Norwegian Story project, which has seen various events and activities exploring Dumfries’ Norwegian connection, culminating in the launch of a new Trail around the town in April 2017. For more details on the project, visit our ONS page here
To come and help add your marks to the map, or to just see how work is developing, stop by the Stove cafe on Wednesday afternoons between 3.30 and 5.30pm. Contact Katharine katharine<at>thestove.org for more details.
Over 800 people have completed an online survey which asked for views on the future of the town centre. From the sign-up on the survey and the two consultation events held since November 2016 there is now a group 0f 483 people in a mailing group to support this local project to re-populate Dumfries High Street as part of efforts to revitalise the town.
Melissa Gunn (University of the West of Scotland – who are members of the community partnership leading the project) says, “We have been overwhelmed by the response from people; we were not expecting to receive as many as we did, considering the number of people we had through the doors during our Bakers Oven event. Online surveys often bring out more negative responses, but here the opposite was true. We were particularly surprised by 40% of people saying they themselves would be keen to live in the town centre.”
The Midsteeple Quarter survey was completed by a wide age range of people with 20% of respondents under 35, the majority between 35 and 60 and 23% over 60. People felt that a populated High Street was important for a vibrant town centre. There was also strong support for a mix of accommodation from affordable tenancies to student accommodation and private flats available in the upper floors above the shops.
Confirming previous work conducted by The Stove Network, the consultations revealed support for a more diverse approach to the future of the town centre with a very positive response to ideas of enterprise, education, live-work, health services and restaurants/nightlife all being available as well as more events, festivals and markets to encourage more footfall in the town centre.
Next Steps:
The Midsteeple Quarter project is developing fast including progress with:
Transferring the Bakers Oven building to community ownership to be developed as a business/education innovation hub with residential accommodation above.
Dumfries & Galloway NHS have joined the community partnership as part of their plans to re-locate services and staff as part of the changes connected with the new hospital.
We are moving forward with the formation of a new community company called ‘Dumfries High Street’ to steward the Midsteeple Quarter project for the benefit of local people.
Preparations are underway for a national architectural competition to test out the public’s ideas and shape a vision for the project that can be delivered by the community partnership.
Working with DGC Planners to embed Midsteeple Quarter within the new Local Development Plan.
All in all there is very encouraging progress around the project – the local media are reporting very positively (see BBC here) and we have cross-party political support. If you would like to know more detail or get more actively involved please reply to this email or drop into The Stove Cafe for a chat.
We have received some great news to end the year – The Stove Network has been awarded the best Creative Regeneration Project in Scotland 2016! The prestigious Scottish Urban Regeneration Form (SURF) Awards took place in Glasgow last week, at the Award presentation dinner. Launched in 2003, these awards have become the benchmark for best practice and innovation in community regeneration in Scotland. This is an award for everyone connected to The Stove. We’ve all been a part of making a new momentum of change in Dumfries – whether taking part in projects, attending events, or simply being a member and telling others that The Stove is something worth checking out.
During their visit to the Stove back in October, the judges of the SURF Awards noticed a buzz about the town and could see that a big part of that was down to The Stove. It’s fantastic that other people are looking at Dumfries as somewhere that is trying out new ideas. The SURF Awards are a way of profiling and sharing these ideas. It’s been great to find out about other projects across Scotland as well, and we’re really pleased to be have been nominated alongside them
The judges commented, “The Stove Network demonstrates that a strong and uncompromising creative vision stimulates debate, giving the local community a greater voice in issues affecting Dumfries, from frequent flooding to high street regeneration. It was clear that The Stove Network has had a significant and transformational impact on Dumfries, and that the energy and drive demonstrated by the creative team, their partners and the wider community will continue to revitalise Dumfries and make a real difference to the place and to people’s lives.”
The SURF Awards identifies and celebrates success in revitalising Scottish communities. The other projects shortlisted alongside Dumfries were from Easterhouse in Glasgow and Falkirk. Since 1998, the SURF Awards have promoted regeneration initiatives, large and small from across Scotland. Town centres are now looking at different ways of sustaining themselves, and creativity and the arts have a big part to play in this.
Over 15th and 16th November, The Stove Network led a two-day event in the Bakers Oven on Dumfries High Street to talk to people about bold new plans for the town centre. Midsteeple Quarter is an innovative way to encourage people to live back in the town through a community-led company developing a section of the High Street as a live/work quarter. Over the past year The Stove has consulted with members of the community and a consensus has emerged that re-populating the town centre is a major part of any plan to bring new life back to the High Street.
Chapter One at The Baker’s Oven, Dumfries.
Over the last year we have noticed a real shift in attitudes – in the past people tended to look to the Council to do everything. Now the conversation has changed to ‘what can we do ourselves?’. This is a very positive change and one that has been confirmed by the number of local groups becoming part of the Midsteeple Quarter project – these include: Loreburn Community Council, Third Sector D&G, Unviversity of West of Scotland, NHS D&G, Crichton Institute, Upland, MakLab Dumfries and many more including the Council.
The Bakers Oven became a lively project hub over the 15th and 16th November, featuring a pop up living room, discussions and workshops. It also featured the exhibition, ‘People’s Dumfries’; a collection of Dumfries inspired artworks, including models of buildings within the town by Frank Brown. The Bakers Oven also played host to in house writer and Stove Curatorial Team Member, Martin Joseph O’Neill. Through the night of the 15th November, Martin spent 12 hours writing as part of ongoing project – Midnight Moonlight Smalltown Rain. Words and thoughts appeared in real time on the windows of the Bakers Oven. Come dawn, the story was complete.
Over 100 people signed up to ‘The Dumfries Pledge’ in support of community development in the town and people also shared their stories of old Dumfries and contributed to the vision for a Midsteeple Quarter. Suggestions included a focus on the Whitesands as a tourist destination and entry point to the town, affordable live/work premises in the town centre to encourage new enterprises, bringing services like healthcare and education into the town centre and more of a focus on the history of the town, with Tour Guides and History Tours throughout the region.
People’s comments and plans from the exhibition will be on show in the Stove Café from Tuesday 29th November for the town to continue to comment and get involved. The project recently received a boost at the beginning of this week with news of seed funding from The Scottish Government’s Activating Ideas Fund. This will allow the local community’s ideas to be taken to the next stage of reality and The Stove building will continue to be the information point for the project. Anyone interested in contributing or signing up to the Dumfries Pledge is encouraged to drop in or get in touch with The Stove – [email protected].
Over the last 8 months The Stove has been part of a major community-led project within Dumfries to take positive action to create a new, beating heart in centre of the town. This initiative has gone through a series of working titles including: ‘#MakingDumfries’ and ‘Living on the High Street’ (search these terms in our website and social media and the detailed story will emerge) – but for now Midsteeple Quarter is the title that most of the diverse partnership involved in the project will recognise.
Midsteeple Quarter re-imagines a strip of empty shop buildings on Dumfries High Street as a community-run mixed development of live-work/ education/ enterprise/ social spaces.
Empty properties on Dumfries High Street (above) re-imagined as a vibrant mixed development
The project began with the #SquareGo events in March 2016 which saw The Stove taking over Fountain Square in Dumfries to ask local people how they would like to see the Town Centre re-invent itself for a new era when market towns like Dumfries will not be dominated by retail.
People marked their ideas in chalk directly onto the paving of Fountain Square
The main themes identified at #SquareGo were displayed in The Stove Cafe for 2 months for further discussion and additions
Repopulating the town centre was one of the strongest themes identified by the #SquareGo project
In the same week as #SquareGo John Wallace’s documentary ‘A House on the High Street’ was premiered at The Stove.
The film inspired local resident John Dowson to convene a meeting of stakeholders in the town centre to see if a practical action plan could be agreed to take forward the ‘re-populating’ idea. NB ‘slum’ clearances in the 1960’s emptied the centre of Dumfries with people re-locating to the housing estates at the edges of the town – now less than 1000 people of a total town population of 40,000 live in the town centre and John and his wife are effectively the last remaining residents of the High Street itself.
The initial meeting identified the run of empty buildings on the High Street starting from Bank Street and running up past the Midsteeple as the location for a core ‘block’ that could establish a new pattern of inhabitation and uses for the High Street and start the re-population of the centre.
Midsteeple Quarter marked in red
Artists impression of a mixed live-work development (indicative only)
A core aspect of the project is for local people to literally take back ownership of their town centre. Currently most of the buildings are owned by Pension Funds and other corporate ‘absentee landlords’ – these owners have no stake in the town beyond the relative value of the assets on their balance sheet. New legislation is being passed by the Scottish Government that will grant powers to community groups to take ownership of underused assets in their area – the Dumfries initiative was written up on the Common Space web platform as part of the Common Weal’s ‘Our Land’ festival in August 2016
Around this time The Stove Network established itself as the Community Development Trust for the town centre of Dumfries and was accepted as a full member of Development Trust Association of Scotland – see here for the definition of a Development Trust. The Stove then became the gathering point and lead organisation for a diverse community partnership that supported the idea of the Midsteeple Quarter and were playing a positive part in making the project a reality:
The Stove Network, Loreburn Community Council, Third Sector Dumfries and Galloway, University of the West of Scotland, Crichton Institute, Dumfries and Galloway Chamber of Commerce, MakLab, Dumfries and Galloway Council, D+G College, Loreburn Housing Assc, NHS, South Scotland MSPs, Dumfries and Galloway MP, Prominent local individuals and professionals
The vision for the project was further developed through a Visioning Session attended by 28 people representing the stakeholders listed above.
Stakeholders Gathering 6th October 2016 at The Stove
The Stove Network then circulated and action plan for group which had the priorities of:
Interacting with the Local Plan being developed by Dumfries and Galloway Council for Dumfries – to build in special conditions for the Midsteeple Quarter, enabling mixed development to be supported by statutory processes
Holding an national Architectural ‘ideas competition’ for Midsteeple Quarter to shape an identity for the project that local people and other stakeholders could get behind
Formation of a Community Benefit Company for the project that would be able to offer Community Shares to local people to fund the purchase and development of under-used properties in Midsteeple Quarter
Taking ownership of the ‘Bakers Oven’ building (from Dumfries and Galloway Council) in the Midsteeple Quarter and developing this in partnership with University of West of Scotland as an enterprise and education hub with residential accommodation above
The Stove Network has created drawings to define the idea of the Midsteeple Quarter – these have been shortlisted in the Futuretown Scotland competition run by Scotlands Towns Partnership. The drawing were done by Dion Corbett an recent graduate of Strathclyde University who has returned home to Dumfries to build her career here and is working at The Stove.
On 15th and 16th November, the Midsteeple Quarter project will be occupying the Bakers Oven building for local people to see progress and talk about their ideas and ways to be involved in making this vital project for the town come to fruition. Details about this ‘Chapter One’ event are – here
For more info about the project, and/or you’d like to get involved, please contact Matt Baker at matt<at>thestove.org
September brought Our Norwegian Trail to life with the most recent Mapping Event.We scribbled, played, discussed and stitched Our Story into creation on a beautiful sunny day despite half of our team being struck down by one of those Autumn bugs.
Large chalk drawings are always fun!We had lots of young helpers join in our antics outside on the pavement as well as a few inquisitive chats and walks down memory lane.
Artist Deirdre Nelson joined us over the two days with large printed squares of Dumfries.Embroidery silks at the ready she helped passers by stitch significant places in Dumfries’ Norwegian history as well as other personnel significance onto our maps.We are looking forward to welcoming her back to continue – and maybe tidy up slightly some of our own attempts – for the next ONS event STORY on the 10th, 11th and 12th of November, come join us!
If you have a place or a memory that relates to Dumfries’ Norwegian Story please do get in touch, we are keen to make this story truly Dumfries’.
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