The Stove Cafe and Conversing Building invites artists and creative folk from Dumfries and beyond to submit artworks to feature as part of a Christmas selling exhibition.
Every year, our Cafe hosts a festive display and this year we’d like to use the space to support local artists and create additional space for the purchase of artworks during the festive season.
The exhibition will run from Tuesday 22nd November to Thursday 22nd December, open to the public during regular cafe hours at The Stove, Monday-Saturday’s, 9am-3pm.
We will host an additional evening as part of Dumfries Christmas Lights Switch On Friday, 25th November from 4pm.
How To Submit Artwork:
Artists may submit up to a maximum of two artworks per person.
2D artworks should not exceed 60cm in any direction, and 3D artworks should not exceed 30cm in any direction.
Artworks must be dropped off during one of our scheduled drop off dates (see below), or by appointment only
Artists must complete a contacts form including BACS Bank Transfer information before leaving any artworks. These will be available during our scheduled drop off dates or by emailing [email protected].
Any unsold artworks must be collected on Monday 9th January 2023.
Artwork Drop Off Dates:
Artworks can be dropped off Tuesday, 15th November between 3pm and 6pm, or Wednesday, 16th November between 12noon and 4pm.
For more information drop an email to Public Art Lead Katie Anderson, [email protected].
*Conversing Building is an ongoing project at The Stove, that looks to activate spaces around The Stove through a variety of visual and public art projects and displays. For more info on the project visit our project page here.
Open and accessible drawing workshops. No experience needed, for any age or ability. Only £8 with all materials provided – pay on the door
Drawing for Enjoyment returns to The Stove on the High Street in the centre of Dumfries with a focus to getting back to the essence of drawing and enjoying the meditative and restorative qualities it brings to well-being.
Covering lots of accessible subjects and methods, these sessions are perfect for beginners or for anyone who wants to develop their practice.
Starting with a ten minute demonstration at the beginning of each session with some guided handouts to aid progress through the class.
Join the For Enjoyment community and get creative in a relaxing friendly and supportive environment.
No need to book but there are limited spaces in the cafe space so don’t be late !
Open and accessible drawing workshops. No experience needed, for any age or ability. Only £8 with all materials provided – pay on the door
Drawing for Enjoyment returns to The Stove on the High Street in the centre of Dumfries with a focus to getting back to the essence of drawing and enjoying the meditative and restorative qualities it brings to well-being.
Covering lots of accessible subjects and methods, these sessions are perfect for beginners or for anyone who wants to develop their practice.
Starting with a ten minute demonstration at the beginning of each session with some guided handouts to aid progress through the class.
Join the For Enjoyment community and get creative in a relaxing friendly and supportive environment.
No need to book but there are limited spaces in the cafe space so don’t be late !
Open and accessible drawing workshops. No experience needed, for any age or ability. Only £8 with all materials provided – pay on the door
Drawing for Enjoyment returns to The Stove on the High Street in the centre of Dumfries with a focus to getting back to the essence of drawing and enjoying the meditative and restorative qualities it brings to well-being.
Covering lots of accessible subjects and methods, these sessions are perfect for beginners or for anyone who wants to develop their practice.
Starting with a ten minute demonstration at the beginning of each session with some guided handouts to aid progress through the class.
Join the For Enjoyment community and get creative in a relaxing friendly and supportive environment.
No need to book but there are limited spaces in the cafe space so don’t be late !
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.
