The Young Stove have been busy making plans for their next projects this year, we are looking forward to exciting times ahead! To kick start the year, we organised a trip up to Glasgow – to get inspired, and get some tips and ideas from creatives based in the city at various stages in their careers, as well as getting a bit of a flavour for the art scene in some of the city’s galleries. Big thanks to Alison McLeod at Briggait’s WASPS sutdios, Gregor Wright at the Modern Institute and Genevieve Kay Gourlay at the Pipe Factory for taking time out to chat to us about their artistic careers.
Visiting Alison McLeod’s jewellery studio in the Briggait, chatting about inspiration, vintage finds and studio space
Stopping in at Gregor Wright’s studio at the Modern Institute and hearing more about life post art school, the Glasgow art scene and some of his latest works and projects
Dinosaurs as part of Gregor’s recent work during last years GI festival
There was a lot of love for the Pipe Factory, Genevieve shows us around the cavernous space
Appropriate tourist snaps, and a chance to check out Alistair Grey’s inspirational show at GoMA, and blitz spending money in the arts supplies shop
If you’d like to find out more about the Young Stove, if you’d like to get involved in developing creative projects in Dumfries and find out what kind of opportunities you can be part of, send us an email to [email protected]
Last November as part of the Dumfries Christmas Light’s Switch On, members of the Young Stove took on their first project, creating an interactive artwork on the High Street. Developing ideas for a less commercial, more natural Christmas, the group decided to gift live Christmas trees to those attending the Switch On in exchange for a Christmas wish of goodwill.
Report on the Young Stove Christmas Lights project by Young Stove member Michael Moore
Originally two worries I had about the project was “Would we have enough time for the event to be a big hit?” and “Would the public really get a feeling of the non-materialist Christmas?” I was happy to find I’d been worrying for no reason as within an hour and fifty minutes all the trees had been “re-homed” and the Glowing Gifts with their attached wishes were all sat ornately on and all around the stand.
Far from people simply saying something and getting a tree I found that the majority of people involved were both really interested in understanding how to get their tree to flourish and even struggled to choose of a thoughtful wish/hope. People really thinking about what they would give if they could was brilliant to see.
The only thing I was more impressed with than the public interest was my fellow Young Stove members. They were straight into interaction with the public from the get go and never showed a second of stress even when the public crowd gathered around our stand waiting keenly to see what the event was about. All of the members went into a fantastic operational mode where no “ordering” was needed. We all interacted with each other as equals and there could be no question of a lack of respect for anyone present that’s not just supposedly rare with young people, but also rare with people generally!
I’m impressed and happy to see all the work that was put into the project become a success but I’m happier still to be part of a group of creative and ambitious people working in a naturally co-operative autonomous way. It’s really great to see individual artists collaborating happily to create an event in bringing the community together even on a cold dark winters day.
I’m excited to see what we think of next and I’m (almost) hoping it’s nothing too easy to make happen as it seems its sometimes better to be overambitious!
To see the full set of photos from the event head to our Flickr page here
“Back in October I got the chance to take part in Parking Space set up by the Stove and Sleeping Giants. Such a great weekend meeting all the people there, having a great time skating and filming and just soaking up the good times. The whole idea that every level you went down was a new event to watch and take part in really made it for me. Here’s some stills from a video in the works from the event I filmed with Mutual Motion.”
Watch Callum’s short film created as part of Parking Space here:
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Keep up with Callum and his film and photography work online:
