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HAME. New work by resident artists Mark Lyken & Emma Dove

We’ve been artists in residence with The Stove for 5 months and are now in to the final month before our film and sound installation HAME opens on 2nd May as part of The Stove’s Open House series of events to mark the launch of 100 High St.

HAME explores relationships to Dumfries and Galloway through the words of those who call it home. During our time working here we have been very privileged to record conversations with over 45 people throughout D&G and guided by these conversations have gathered footage around the area from our trusty Black Cab, chauffeured by the excellent Will Marshall. Our experience, perspectives and knowledge of D&G has gradually mutated and transformed through these conversations and our own explorations.

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Filming at the Dalveen Pass. Images © Will Marshall.

We have been recalling when we first moved here from Glasgow, following the Sat Nav to our house, exploring our own street and seeking directions to the shop. Journeys through the unfamiliar have gradually become dotted with reference points – places we’ve passed through, stopped to film or interview someone. Names of towns and villages that previously floated in an imaginary space now slot in to their geographical location. Buildings, bridges, trees and rivers that were once void of meaning now sprout stories and conjure images.

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A few of the significant places marked by interviewees.

Through the process of filming and recording whilst journeying through the area we have become more acutely aware of its rhythms and the interconnecting threads of feelings, memories and knowledge of those living both within it and thinking on it from afar.

We have heard stories of everything from ancient stone markings in Eggerness to hiding places at Annan harbour to recollections of a Palmerston football match in 1958. There have been childhood dens, daredevil antics and trees that sprouted chocolate biscuits. Grub-collecting hot spots, smelly spots and “J” spots. Bad corners, best views, secret beaches and spooky ruins.  Sunday mass in a chip shop, raves in a woodland, and the 2am ‘accidental’ purchase of a stretch limo in a pub. We’ve learned how to appropriately pronounce ‘Kirkgunzeon’ ‘Caerlaverock’ and ‘Red Cola’, have finally worked out the parking system in Dumfries and we now know how to find anyone’s house in D&G (over the wee bridge, round the bend and up the hill).

Interview with Denise & Mark Zygaldo
Interview with Denise & Mark Zygaldo

As ever, the more we explore, the more questions arise, layers of perspectives overlap, clash and muddle, and the more we realise we do not know. Yet through this has developed a kinship and a care. And this seems to be the binding thread connecting everyone that we have spoken to. Everyone, in one way or another, genuinely cares.

Perhaps what has most surprised us though is how the process of the last few months has changed our own perspectives so much so that we now feel at home here ourselves and are on the look out for a place to stay beyond the project (you know the place – over the wee bridge, round the bend and up the hill?).

We hope you can make it along to the opening of HAME, 2nd May and look forward to seeing you there!

Emma & Mark
Dalbeattie, March 2015
Previous project blog posts:
New Stove Artists in Residence. Guest Blog Alert
Taxi to Dumfries? 

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Musings News

Cultivating the High Street: Artists and Town Centres

From Andrew Gordon

High streets across Britain are fundamentally changing, and Dumfries is no exception. The combined impact of the economic downturn, out of town complexes and online shopping is leading to more and more town centre closures. The effect on Dumfries is unmistakable, from the closure of national chains stores, to long established family-owned businesses, each leaving behind empty husks in what once were regarded prime locations. With their empty displays these unwanted buildings contribute to a worrying sense that the town is in perpetual decline.

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However there have also been signs of different life; the Electric Theatre Workshop has turned a disused shop into a space for practicing and performing theatre, as well as the central hub for winter festival, Big Burns Supper. Although shops have struggled, cafes and restaurants are continuing to generate business, prompting a number of new openings and refurbishments. These changes remind us that high streets have historically been places to “debate and meet”, as retail-consultant Mary Portas stated in her 2011 report for the UK Government. It is her opinion that high streets must return to this role as “multifunctional, social spaces” if they are to serve any purpose in the future, commerce forming just a part of their civic service rather than dictating it.

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The Stove Network shares this vision – it aims to demonstrate that rethinking the way we use the vacant buildings on the high street can have a profound and beneficial impact on the local community. By opening it’s new accessible public arts space at 100 High Street, it will be placing creativity and risk taking right at the centre of local efforts to re-imagine Dumfries as a contemporary regional capital.

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The retail chains that previously occupied these spaces were concerned with telling us what we want. The Stove will instead respond to what we need, a collaborative effort between artists and others in the town to cultivate a place that will serve us as citizens rather than consumers. This means including the public in the operation of the Stove itself and the Tuesday Drop-In sessions are one example. These weekly meetings will invite one and all to discuss the Stove’s operation, and to voice their own ideas about what it should be doing more of to contribute towards the regeneration of Dumfries town centre. The Charter14 event held during last year’s Guid Nychburris festival, asked Doonhamers to put forward their own ambitions for the town’s future as part of a new “People’s Charter”, and is another example of The Stove Network’s approach.

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By offering ready access to art and the tools of its creation in the very centre of the town, the Stove stands to thoroughly involve the people of Dumfries in bringing about constructive change to the place we call hame, turning an otherwise forlorn relic of times gone by into a symbol for a new future for Dumfries – one conducted on our own terms. “High streets will thrive if we re-imagine them”, Mary Portas suggests, and what better way could there be to inspire new ways of thinking about the high street than through art?

All images are of Charter14, Guid Nychburris Day Festival June 2014. All images: Colin Tennant

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News Project Updates

Five Great Events for the Opening of The Stove

Open House sees The Stove Network populating The Stove at 100 High Street for the first time since building works began last year, and welcomes the town and the wider network to stop by, get involved in and experience some of what we hope to bring into Dumfries’ town centre. Open House is a series of very different events that will show the versatility of The Stove as a physical space and the ambition of the project for the town centre.

We kick off with the third annual Dumfries Music Conference on 24th and 25th April. As in previous years, DMC2015 will feature workshops, talks, film, live music, expert opinion and creative collaboration. Through a collection of brilliant partners and guests, we hope to educate, inspire and entertain. DMC2015 will mark the official opening of The Stove Building at 100 High Street. In celebration of this we are going to fill the entire building with colour, music and people. Full details will be made available here as they are announced!

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On 28th April The Stove hosts Open Mouth – a day of spoken word, performance and cooking. During the day The Stove building will hold workshops for school students before then moving into a performance workshop from 5pm. A public performance starts at 7pm featuring Moffat based Sarah Indigo and other performers from the Scottish spoken word scene and young people who have attended the daytime workshops. Full details available here 

Open Mouth is specially created and delivered for The Stove Network by Sarah Indigo, Eryl Shields and Open Jar Collective

Produced in collaboration with Wigtown Festival Company

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29th April sees House Warming – an open invite (12.30pm-4.30pm) to come and see The Stove building, have a chat and make a T-shirt.
From 6pm there will be a Stove Members Gathering, which will include a public bonfire, and Bannock making in the town square with Open Jar from 7.30pm. More details available here.

At 7pm on Saturday 2nd May come to The Stove for the public launch of HAME, an impressionistic journey through Dumfries & Galloway voiced by those who call it home. Film, voice, field recording and subtle music intermingle and connect across 2 floors and out into the High Street of Dumfries.

HAME is a film and sound installation by artists Mark Lyken and Emma Dove, specially commissioned for the opening of The Stove at 100 High St, Dumfries.

Full details of the launch will be announced shortly, and available here

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Every Tuesday starting 19th May
(until mid June) you are invited to Drop-In @ The Stove – pop in for a brew and a blether about The Stove and the town…. what would you like to see The Stove doing? What are your ideas for the town centre? What would you like to do at The Stove? We’ll be open and we’d love to hear your ideas! Drop In will run from 12 noon till 6pm every Tuesday, so just drop in on your way past! More details available here 

Keep up with the latest updates on Open House via our social media on Facebook and Twitter, using #OpenHouse

Categories
News Project Updates

The Young Stove’s Day Out

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.

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Visiting Alison McLeod’s jewellery studio in the Briggait, chatting about inspiration, vintage finds and studio space
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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
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Dinosaurs as part of Gregor’s recent work during last years GI festival
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There was a lot of love for the Pipe Factory, Genevieve shows us around the cavernous space
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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]

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