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Tag: Making Dumfries

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News Project Updates

Football in Our Street – ONS Rematch

In August we reclaimed the High Street of Dumfries town centre with football (albeit in a cage – next time we can try without!).  Celebrating the long standing friendship of local football club Greystone Rovers with Norway started in a 1940 match between Dumfries locals and Norwegian exiles resulting in a draw.  A rematch was called and eventually played in Bergen in 1951 beginning a series of exchange visits over the years since.  With Greystone Rovers 80th anniversary upcoming in 2018 they are keen to resume their friendship and exchange opportunities for their club members.  Graham Muir, club manager, has supported The Stove’s Our Norwegian Story project as an important recognition of how beneficial these friendships can be.

This event tied in with the Our Land festival of events across Scotland looking at land use and the importance of community ownership of these spaces.  The Stove wrote an article to highlight how our events can reach out to tackle wider national issues which can be found here on The Common Space website:

www.commonspace.scot/articles/9000/our-land-its-time-buy-back-our-high-street

Our Norwegian Story continues to develop, with the depth of stories bubbling up from under the surface, with personnel memories knitting together these more historical events.

Stay tuned for more next week – Films, food, drawing big maps and stitching our story into existence!

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Football in our Streets
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Activity outside The Stove
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The Greystone Rovers youth team
The Greystone Rovers youth team
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Screen printing T-shirts with Sarah Keast
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Memorabilia from the 70 year relationship between Greystone Rovers and SK Brann was on display in The Stove
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Time for Subbuteo

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News

Its Time to Buy Back Our High Street

read the full article here
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News

Changing the World with Hand and Brush

Today our new friend and sign painting ninja Ciaran Glöbel led a group of Stove members in an inspirational workshop on the art of hand painted lettering.

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An example of Ciaran’s work – you can see more at his website 
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Ciaran talks alphabets

There is a resurgence of interest in the traditional art of sign painting – this is partly because the sameness and ubiquity of computer generated plastic signage is wearing thin and partly because street artists (graffiti etc) are rediscovering the old arts of hand painted signage as a language for their work. Ciaran Glöbel is good example of this – he is a street artist who for the last two years has been making a living as a sign painter.

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Letters by Elli, Ciaran + Jo, Katie, Lyndsay
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Single stroke brush lettering practice

The day was rounded off with a public screening of ‘Sign Painters’ a movie which is a moving call to arms for artists to take to the streets and bring back the quality and originality of bespoke designed and hand made signage and street art.

‘I think every human being has the ability to alter their own environment with their bare hands.’ ……absolutely goddamn right!

Just imagine how different Dumfries High Street could look if all the independent traders had hand painted signage by local artists? #MakingDumfries

Thanks to Katie for organising everything and Ciaran for being so generous with his knowledge and having great banter

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News

Making Dumfries – Part 1

Week beginning 28th March sees the Stove welcome the Scottish Year of Architecture, Innovation and Design into our world with a series of events and activity, as the first part of an ongoing project, Making Dumfries. Over the course of the next few months, Making Dumfries will create opportunities to contribute to the development of a new vision for the town centre, with workshops facilitated by leading local designers and cultural groups, of which our events are the starting point of.

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Square Go
Tuesday 29th and Wednesday 30th of March 10am – 4pm daily
Join the Stove alongside a team of local architects, artists and planners in creating a giant pavement drawing re-imagining the town centre – whatever your interests. How would you like to experience Dumfries in the future? As part of Square Go, the Glasgow Institute of Architects will set up the travelling pavilion, Eolas in the square which will be the HQ for our Square Go project, drop by and get involved.
If you are interesting in participating in the development of this project there are more details available here

Possible Scotland
Tuesday 29th and Wednesday 30th of March Lateral North’s touring project, Possible Scotland will visit Dumfries as it travels around Scotland in 2016 to support and work with the Square Go project. Join the team for an open workshop on Wednesday, from 2 – 5pm.

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Scottish Scenic Route exhibition
28th March – 8th April
From the 28th of March, the Stove will host the Scottish Scenic Route exhibition, a project exploring the impact and possibility of small architectural interventions along Scotland’s key tourist routes.

Film Premiere
Tuesday 29th March 7pm
The premiere of a specially comissioned film by artist and filmmaker, John Wallace exploring the history and culture of Dumfries High Street. The screening will be accompanied by talks and discussions on the past and future of the High Street. All welcome.

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News

Incoming… 2016 at The Stove

What’s in store at The Stove this year? With building works continuing downstairs in The Stove this month ahead of our regular opening times from next month, the Stove’s operations and curatorial teams are busy preparing and planning for a bumper 2016 year. Select each image below for more details.

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Musings Project Updates

New Distractions

We asked ourselves a question: “Can a sign above a High Street building ever do anything other than promote and brand; can it ask questions, be part of a conversation with other signs… can our High Street ever be a space that prioritises people as well as sales?”

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Whose downturn is this?

As a species we show ourselves to be resilient and forever adaptable, but what true opportunities are there between the moss and the ‘for sale’ signs? How do we re-make the spaces between the High Streets we remember and what is left when our High Street no longer meets the bottom line of the multinationals?

Our town centres have grown out of a need to gather, connect, meet, barter and exchange. Dumfries owes its place to the river, the cattle marts and the passage of people. But from our largely rural context, Dumfries has also been the gathering point, the melting pot of communities meeting and exchanging, not just economically but socially, our connection out into the world.

‘A marketplace (rather than ‘market’) is a sociable space in which buying and selling take place surrounded by other activities, a place you come to see friends, to hear stories, to argue about ideas. Crucially, unlike a Starbucks or a department store, it is a space where your welcome is not determined purely by your abilities to spend money.’*

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What is valuable on our High Streets?

Dumfries stands at a point questioning its identity, and it’s place within the world. Primark may not have arrived, but there is an air of anticipation and change whispering quietly amongst a growing number of the town’s communities. Now is the time to search for the new role we can play in creating the future of Dumfries, to reach out for a possible Dumfries.

Dumfries is not dead, only sleeping. Hidden Dumfries is in plain sight, behind the sagging bus stances and single occupancy street furniture.

Now is the time to act.

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How do we judge what a downturn is anyways?

This action does not require grand master planners, or large scale redevelopment, but a little collective energy and small positive acts. Testing and experimentation, problem solving and lightweight interventions can lead the way to a more active high street, looking forward to a more valuable town centre. Small actions can highlight, question, explore and initiate discussion, growing from an inquisitive response to our everyday.

This is a call for new distractions.

Can we create a new visual language for our high streets?

*Dougald Hine, Space Makers. Quoted in how to save our town centres, by Julian Dobson.

Supported by:
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