Second Place was awarded to Andie Cooke, Megan ward, Cara Brunton and Ashley Mitchell.
Our recent exhibition in the Stove cafe is now on the move! Following a two week show in Dumfries, the exhibition is now installed and available to visit in the Southblock, in Glasgow during regular cafe hours.
The Midsteeple Quarter Ideas Exhibition features 15 different submissions to our Architecture Ideas Competition that was launched in April in partnership with the Glasgow Institute of Architects.
The winners were selected by our panel of judges (see here for details) and are as follows: Winner – First Place
Gordon Fleming, ARPL Architects Second Place
Andie Cooke, Megan Ward, Cara Brunton and Ashley Mitchell Third Place
Pioneer Landscape Architecture Drawing Commendation
Ryan Canning and Titas Grikevicius, Holmes Miller
Following the close of the Dumfries exhibition our People’s Choice Winner, selected by popular vote, has also been announced:
Gordon Fleming, ARPL Architects
Exhibition Dates:
Friday 30 June – Wednesday 12 July 2017
Exhibition Venue:
South Block, 60-64 Osborne St, Glasgow, G1 5QH
MQIC Winner’s Presentation and Debate:
We invite you to join us on Thursday 6th July, between 6-7.30pm, to see presentations by the winning 3 entries and to discuss the possibilities of architectural responses to the decline of our high streets. Free to attend with complimentary wine but please book here
If you missed seeing the exhibition in Dumfries, and can’t make the Glasgow venue, the competition entries are available to download as a pdf, available here
The results of our Midsteeple Quarter Architecture Competition have been announced, with Ayr based ARPL Architects winning the 1st prize of £1000. Gordon Flemming from ARPL Architects stated, “We are very pleased that our ideas for the Midsteeple Quarter in Dumfries were recognised by the competition judges. The challenge of ensuring regional town centres stay viable and lively is a great task and we hope our contribution to the discussion helps add a new dimension to this.”
Gordon Fleming’s entry wins First Place
The Midsteeple Quarter project is an important part of a national debate about the future of town centres as traditional retail declines everywhere, the architectural ideas submitted are not proposals of what will be built, but a way of continuing the conversation of how the Midsteeple Quarter could develop as a new heart of our town centre.
The judging panel consisted of John Dowson, a Dumfries High Street Resident; Melissa Gunn, Lecturer in Business and Enterprise at the University of the West of Scotland & Chair of the Board of Directors at The Stove Network; Tim Gray, Director at Holmes Miller Architects & GIA President; Iain Monteith, Director at Loader & Monteith Architects and Tutor at the Mackintosh School of Architecture and David Cowan, Head of Regeneration Unit at the Scottish Government.
Second place was awarded to a group of young female architects who focused their entry on the social aspect of regenerating Dumfries High Street, providing solutions which introduced both day and night time activity. Their reimaging of the town centre sought to provide an achievable, affordable and permanent solution to empty shop fronts whilst integrating student accommodation into the heart of a potentially thriving community. Third place was awarded to Pioneer Landscape Architecture, who looked at the unique nature of the site and its spaces to guide their response. Their aim was to revitalise the Midsteeple Quarter by making proposals on both a regional and local scale, reinstating the importance of Dumfries as a regional capital in a post retail society. In addition to the cash prizes the Judges wanted to commend Ryan Canning and Titas Grikevicius from Holmes Miller with a Drawing Commendation.
Second Place was awarded to Andie Cooke, Megan ward, Cara Brunton and Ashley Mitchell.
Sam Patterson, who coordinated the architecture competition on behalf of the Glasgow Institute of Architects, commented, “The GIA are delighted to have worked with The Stove Network on developing such a rich and challenging competition brief and we are thrilled with the range of ideas that were received across the 15 submissions. The quality of the submissions exceeded our expectations and we hope will stimulate the debate in Dumfries about the potential of the Midsteeple Quarter.”
Long-term and careful public consultation has brought a consensus that re-populating the town centre is an urgent necessity. Late last year,we conducted an online survey and had responses from over 800 members of the public. Their responses 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 in the town centre as well as more events, festivals and markets to encourage more people to come into the town.
On Friday 9th June, entries to the Midsteeple Quarter Architecture Competition will be on display in the Stove building, 100 High Street, until 21st June, as well as South Block in Glasgow. The exhibition launch at The Stove will be opened by the new Leader of Dumfries and Galloway Council, Councillor Elaine Murray, and will begin at 6.30pm. Everyone is invited to come along and view the architectural concepts for the Midsteeple Quarter of Dumfries High Street from professional individuals and practices for a reimaged urban core of Dumfries. The public in Dumfries will be able to vote for a ‘Peoples Choice’ winner at the exhibition at The Stove.
For more information, please contact David Smith at [email protected] or visit the Glasgow Institute of Architects website http://gia.org.uk.
Midnight Streetlight Smalltown Rain is a project between artists Martin Joseph O’Neill, Colin Tennant and composer and musician Stuart Macpherson. First conceived as a short poem MSMR has since moved onto include a series of artworks and interventions throughout the High Street and side streets of Dumfries town.
Come Dawn, a 12 hour writing project from 7PM to 7AM took place at the Bakers Oven in November. A performance installation, the writer sat typing whilst in real time, the words were projected onto the windows of the empty unit in front of a live audience.
Working from a manuscript of 60 pages the collective were commissioned by the D-LUX Festival of Light to produce an artwork showcasing one of the poems to be projected behind the Stove. The artwork deployed Burroughs’ cut-up method of writing in a live performance lasting four hours, four nights a week, where a single poem was transformed continuously by adding and subtracting the words, manually blocking the light of the projector through a window using paper and tape.
The regional project is inspired by the narratives of the small town at night and is to continue throughout the year in installations, performances and interactive artworks throughout the town.
Midnight Streetlight Smalltown Rain was a Stove Members project, supported by DG Unlimited and the Dumfries and Galloway Council.
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.
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
We use cookies to improve your experience on our website, analyse traffic, and personalise content. By using our site, you consent to the use of cookies. Please read our privacy policy for more information.
Cookie Preferences
Manage your cookie preferences below:
Essential cookies enable basic functions and are necessary for the proper function of the website.
Statistics cookies collect information anonymously. This information helps us understand how visitors use our website.
Marketing cookies are used to follow visitors to websites. The intention is to show ads that are relevant and engaging to the individual user.
