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Environmental Arts Festival Scotland 2015…

In 2013 The Stove Network joined with Wide-Open and Spring Fling to co-produce the first Environmental Art Festival Scotland (EAFS) in Dumfries and Galloway……now we are delighted to announce that we are part of bringing you the second outing of the festival – EAFS 2015’Off-Grid’ has been announced this week:

The ruins of Morton Castle, and its fabulous surrounding countryside, will provide the spectacular backdrop for the 2015 Environmental Art Festival Scotland over the weekend of 29/30th August.

The festival, in Dumfries and Galloway, will be an intriguing and playful opportunity for artists to help change ideas and influence thinking about how we need to adapt and change in an era of climate change.

There will be a strong emphasis on youth with five interns playing a central role in organising and delivering the project, helping build a wider, younger audience to engage with environmental issues.

At the heart of the event will be a variety of specially commissioned artworks plus walks, fireside conversations, food art plus other activities to inspire the imagination.

Ruaridh Thin-Smith, one of the interns, said: “The festival will be really enjoyable and fun while addressing some of the most pressing issues of our age.

“EAFS is about getting young people to understand a simple truth – that whatever it might seem, we are in control of our own spaces, our places, our environment.

“If we can understand that we have the power to affect positive changes and make our planet a better place to live, then we can accomplish anything.

EAFS interns at Morton Castle, by Colin Tennant 02. Seen in picture Meredith Langley Vine. MR

The other interns, all from Dumfries and Galloway which is home to EAFS, are Meredith Langley Vine, Katie Anderson, Daniel Leigh and Kerry Annison. The EAFS youth project, which involves a wider group of young people as well as the interns, is funded by the Holywood Trust.

Over the last year the EAFS team has been developing the ethos for a thoughtful and playful festival for 2015. This is reflected in the central themes of “inventiveness, foolishness and generosity as a way of understanding the world”.

It aims to attract visitors from all over Scotland, and beyond, and will bring together people who work with the land, scientists, artists, environmentalists, cultural thinkers, poets and performers to participate in the festival.

Jan Hogarth, a co-curator of EAFS, said: “The castle and its amazing landscape are a brilliant place for an environmental art event which is all about our changing relationship with the environment.

“We are expecting lots of interest from all over the region and the country as a whole in the event, and we are delighted to be working with our team of five interns. They are bringing a huge vitality and a fresh perspective to EAFS.

“We are very grateful for the support of the Holywood Trust and their recognition of the need to engage young people in the arts and landscape.”

Photos by Colin Tennant

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News Project Updates

Thinking Differently About Our Town

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Dumfries is a town at the gateway to Scotland. Famous for its relationship with Rabbie Burns, the town is the nodal point of the region (Dumfries and Galloway) and has a strong heritage past, and an even stronger cultural potential.

Cities, towns and villages throughout Scotland are reimagining their centres and what function they serve within their urban setting.

Inverness is creating different artworks along its River Ness ranging from simple signage installations through to engineered viewing platforms; Oban is reinventing its waterfront and becoming a hub for the Hebrides; Helmsdale has centred its village around arts and heritage with a wonderful cultural centre that is growing leaps and bounds; and even rural Scotland is getting involved in the act with initiatives such as the Scottish Scenic Routes, Spring Fling and the North Coast 500 aiming to reinvent the landscape that they find themselves within.

Dumfries has a similar ambition to reinvent, reimagine and reactivate its high street, its town centre and its entire region. The Stove Network working in collaboration with Lateral North and creative organisations throughout Dumfries would like to invite you to contribute your ideas for a future Dumfries and ultimately towards creating new ideas within the town to showcase the heritage, cultural, environmental, industrial and creative communities that thrive within Dumfries.

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Join us to design these interventions, contribute your ideas and find out about the Dumfries you don’t know; yet.
If you’re someone with a passion for the town of Dumfries, and a commitment to being part of its future, then join us for the Cultural Wayfinding Workshop on the 15th July at The Stove. Full information about the event can be found here.

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News

Catering Scoping Project for The Stove – Open Jar Collective

Catering Scoping Project for The Stove – Abridged version to accompany Catering Tender
Original version by Clem Sandison, Alex Wilde and Hannah Brackston

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Outline of the project

The aim of Open Jar’s work with The Stove Network was to gather ideas and viewpoints about the creation of a catering enterprise at The Stove. Following a period of targeted conversations with key stakeholders and pop-up engagement activities with the public, Open Jar Collective produced a report. This will now inform how the space is developed and used by the public, and forms part of tendering process to appoint someone to deliver the catering enterprise at The Stove. From Dec 2014 – Feb 2015 we surveyed the food businesses local to the Stove building, spoke to eleven individuals / group and ran a public feeding creativity event, which 20 people attended.

Identified needs

By the Stove:

  •  To provide a welcoming space that is a community resource, a hub for the arts community, a space for people to share and connect
  • To provide a flexible space that be used for a range of events, workshops, meetings or other ways of engaging people
  • To have the functioning of any cafe element of the space operated autonomously
  • A catering enterprise would be a stepping stone to the wider programme of the Stove and activities within the building. A way of signposting people.
  • An income stream as part of the social enterprise of the Stove Network Ltd charity and an integrated part of the activities of the charity.
  •  A desire to offer something different with its own unique identity
  •  A desire for the approach to be ethical in terms of operation, production and supply
  • Connected to the wider aim of regeneration and attracting people into the town centre
  • To connect with the street outside the Stove and activity in the square

In the meetings:

  • Training opportunities in the hospitality industry for college students
  • Somewhere to go after 5pm in the town centre
  • There is very little for 14 – 21 year olds in Dumfries
  • For people to work together to rejuvenate the town centr
  •  To create a destination

In the feeding creativity event:

  • Place to meet and space for groups to hire
  • Connecting with local food and food producers
  • A platform for exchange of knowledge or produce between small scale growing
    projects/allotments/community gardens
  • Mindfulness of food – simple menu, good food, affordable price, nourishing environment, sharing table / space
  • A space that is accessible to young people
  • To promote transparent and ethical buying
  • Collaboration – support a range of other local businesses
  •  Not displacing existing business – offering something new or distinct

What are the opportunities?

  • There is a lot of goodwill towards to Stove and excitement about the new building and what it can offer.
  • Offer something different, most places in the town centre are the same
  •  Work with the college to cook food off-site
  • Multi-functional arts venue – meet needs of lots of different groups
  • Alcohol free? – Stricter drink-drive limit – pub atmosphere in a cafe environmen
  •  Experiment with the waste food catering model
  • Growing Hub – connect allotments, exchange/barter schemes, information and knowledge about growing, seed banks
  •  To provide education about growing produce and cooking methods
  • Bringing food production into the town
  • Profit share with pop-up guest chefs / food producers
  • To create a community of people/organisations within the building which has it’s own momentum and draws in different audiences

Challenges

  • If you have a specific offer in order to be a viable business (eg. local food focus), how do you avoid alienating people who aren’t attracted by that particular focus?
  •  Quality is really important
  •  Is it possible to have a social objective of local, fairtrade, ethical and make money?
  • Not to be in direct competition with other food businesses in the town
  • Need a shift of mindset to encourage people to support small, independent business over the chains and multi-nationals
  • To ensure that an operator didn’t crash and burn due to lack of revenue or energy after a year
  • To create a viable enterprise opportunity given the lack of space and kitchen facilities

Considerations / restrictions

Restrictions of prep/serving/storage area:

  • The limited space available for preparing food, cold storage and serving means that it is fairly impossible to do much more than hot and cold drinks, cakes and maybe soup.
  • Catering for pop-up events would still need to happen off-site as there are not the facilities to make cooked meals.
  •  The conversion of the space off the courtyard into dry storage is essential to enable a catering enterprise to operate.
  • A double prep/washing up sink (in addition to the hand wash sink) will need to be permanent fixtures in the space along with the coffee machine, and electrics to power fridges.
  • Ideally the double sink and additional cold storage would be in the courtyard but this doesn’t seem feasible given potential building restrictions and the pillar blocking access.
  • Design will require counter area for serving, preparation and till. Cold storage required, recommend 3 undercounter fridges minimum – for milk, cold drinks, and food. Additional dry storage space for daily stock.
  • Need to be able to reconfigure the space on a regular basis for events so you will want to limit fixed items and have units on wheels.

Design / fit out:

  •  How do you balance the brand of the cafe with the aesthetic vision of the Stove for the space?
  •  Coffee machine would be expected to be part of the equipment that came with the space.
  • Due to space limitations, it may be difficult to fit in a dishwasher in the proposed set-up. This means that all drinks and food would need to be served in compostable paper plates/cups, essentially like take away. This may not appeal to all customers. If an industrial dishwasher was integrated into the prep space and china serving ware was used, additional staffing would be required to clear tables and manage washing up and additional storage space would be needed for china.

Further thoughts

Sourcing / Pricing policy:

There is a direct tension between local/fair trade sourcing and affordability/accessibility of the cafe (i.e. having a more expensive menu than other local cafes and therefore being seen as niche market). The general trend in food businesses in Dumfries is to sell at a very low price (e.g. £1.40 for a take away toastie). This results in food that is not locally sourced, organic, ethical, and is often quite highly processed. Some people in Dumfries may be willing to pay more for better quality ethically sourced food (making it a unique selling point for the cafe), but not everyone. The Stove need to make a decision about how important local food is to them, and define what they mean by ‘local’, ‘ethical’ and ‘sustainable’ in the tender document, as these terms can be very widely interpreted. The Cafe manager/operator may need to charge more than other cafes in the area to fulfil this brief. It’s quite simple to serve organic fairtrade tea and coffee, because the mark-up is much greater on hot drinks than it is on food. There is good profit margin on seasonal veg soups, so this would be a good item on the menu to showcase local produce. Sourcing good quality meat, cheeses, and bread, and keeping prices competitive with other local establishments will be more difficult. The Stove could consider developing a “prefered supplier” list e.g. cheese from Loch Arthur, bread from Earth’s Crust, dried goods from Greencity Wholefoods. The Cafe Manager/Operator would then need to price the menu accordingly based on these suppliers. We think seasonal soup using local ingredients could be the unique food offer, and the best option with limited prep/storage space. This could be a springboard for creating a local food hub, engaging with local growers and setting up fruit and veg bartering schemes. This requires a creative and competent cook/cafe manager to make use of available seasonal produce to prepare fresh soup each day. Alternatively the cafe manager could research other caterers/local businesses that could supply fresh soup, sandwiches, and cakes on a daily basis.

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Musings News Project Updates

Reclaim The High Street – Sign Language

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It’s interesting how obsessions grow. A current obsession is for signs, hand-painted and home grown. We’ve been holding onto our sign-free frontage, The Stove as under new management and a growing, changing space in the town.

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The face of our high streets and high street signage has of course changed dramatically, with the introduction of mass-produced, nationwide branding and the loss of independant retailers bringing a change to the landscape and language of our streets.

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Even RS McColl’s had nice signs at one point! (Look closely)
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My Product Will Enrich Your Status In Life from Mobstr

Also popping up in our social media stream this week has been the phenomena of ‘ghost-signs‘: the remenants of old signs, shops, businesses and brands, gone and almost forgotten within our urban landscapes. At first thought we couldn’t place too many in the Dumfries-scape, but on closer inspection are starting to see them cropping up around town:

This one on Buccleuch Street, double layered signs? Anyone with any notions of what these signs may have been, or any other good sites around the town please get in touch!

Where are we going with this? That is of course, all to be revealed. Guid Nychburris Day is fast approaching, and over the next week the town will be gearing up for the annual festivites on the 20th of June.

We will be holding a hands-on sign-themed event and workshop during our first Saturday Drop-In, so drop by between 12 noon and 4pm on Guid Nychburris Day and get involved! It will be suitable for all ages and abilities and free to participate!

Keep an eye on our events calendar for more details here

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You Couldn’t Make It Up from KidAcne
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News

Rajasthan Drops-In

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photo Graeme Robertson

Every Tuesday at The Stove is Drop-In day…..yesterday we had some very special visitors all the way from India – the Rajasthan Heritage Brass Band no less. The band were in the region courtesy of our pals at DG Arts Festival who asked if they could come and hang out with the Stove for an afternoon and run a workshop in the evening

Rajasthan Heritage Brass Band outside The Stove
Rajasthan Heritage Brass Band outside The Stove – photo Brian Pritchard
Dumfries danced
Dumfries danced – photo Ellen Mitchell
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and danced….some local salsa dancers came along and taught some steps to Bollywood tunes – photo Brian Pritchard
and danced....members of the local community from India saw an opportunity to break out their glad rags for the occasion
and danced….members of the local community from India saw an opportunity to break out their glad rags for the occasion – photo Ellen Mitchell
there was hooping
there was hooping – photo Brian Pritchard
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there was chatting – photo Ellen Mitchell
there was balancing
there was balancing – photo Brian Pritchard
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Watching Dumfropolis – photo Graeme Robertson
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and the Young Stove discussed it all afterwards… photo Brian Pritchard

quite a day at The Stove….bring on some more….another Drop-In next week, are you coming?

Photos courtesy of Brian Pritchard, Ellen Mitchell and Graeme Robertson

Categories
Musings News Project Updates

Beyond Doubt Into Love

What would Dumfries say?

Sometimes things start small.

Thank you Lauren!!

Whilst working with the Young Stove to imagine what The Stove could be, this popped up. The Stove would really have quite a lot to say. What about the rest of the town? If the old buildings in Dumfries could speak, what would they say?

If the old brig would speak, what stories would it tell?

Would it shout loud, or whisper quietly to a neighbour? We thought it best to ask around.

Responses flooding in, and orange speech bubbles floating around town (what would Rabbie say, sat with his view of the High Street?), what places have the loudest voices? Voices started to come thick and fast, helped along by Herald Moxie and a band of merry Young Stovies.

Want to see more speech bubbles? A selection are available here

What speech bubbles could we stand up for? What voices could we wear?

There comes a time when it is good to call in an expert. Our expert on hand, was talented and patient printmaker and artist Sarah Keast. An island of calm amongst apparent chaos, the Stove was a ship sailing in a wild afternoon of frenzied t-shirt printing.

And still we printed on. We ran out of t-shirts, did a quick t-shirt run, printed more t-shirts and ran out of ink before the afternoon was through, printing nearly 140 t-shirts in four hours. The Young Stove showed themselves to be an unstoppable tide of creative energy.

Beyond Doubt Into Love may well be a t-shirt for a moment in time. One things for sure, they are a rare and precious commodity, created by our community, and if anyone has a large mens in the neon pink – we’ve had a request for one.

This is less of an end, and more of a beginning – keep an eye out for speech bubbles: once you start noticing them, they tend to pop up all over the place…

#GetDumfriesTalking

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