Kirsty Harris is an artist and maker whose installations and performances invite people to step inside and take part. Her work places the audience at the centre—encouraging them to weave their own stories into the spaces around them. Recently, as Community Artist at The Stove Network, she’s continued exploring how creativity can transform places and perspectives. Grounded in real materials, generosity, and play, Kirsty’s practice is about making art that connects people through shared e...
Yvonne Barber, Centre Manager at A’ the Airts, speaks about her work leading one of Dumfries and Galloway’s most vibrant community arts centres. A’ the Airts has become a cultural hub for the area, offering a rich programme of arts, crafts, events, and activities for all ages. Set in a town renowned for its traditional knitted textiles, the centre celebrates and revitalises Sanquhar’s creative heritage. Under Yvonne’s leadership, A’ the Airts has played a key role in making Sanquhar a m...
Matt Baker, the founder and outgoing CEO of The Stove Network, discusses the origins and evolution of the Stove - from outsider to part of the cultural establishment. Along with WWDN lead and Stove Development Director, Katharine Wheeler, they explore the civic role culture plays in communities and look at the future of creative placemaking. What We Do Now (WWDN) is a creative placemaking network based in Dumfries & Galloway. We bring together artists and community organizations to co-cre...
In August 2024, Ellisland Farm came to The Stove proposing an exciting project to create a zine for their upcoming exhibition, Beyond Burns: Ellisland's People. The zine was to act as a take-home for visitors to encourage reflection on the exhibition and expand the museum's boundaries as a whole. The commission was given to two young artists/illustrators: Korey Patterson and James Gough, former and current Creative Spaces associates, respectively. For this podcast, Korey and James met up with...
In this debut episode, we chat with Cameron Hunter—audio producer, musician, and drummer for North Atlas. Cameron shares insights into his work mentoring young artists in Dumfries & Galloway and his journey in music and production. What We Do Now (WWDN) is a creative placemaking network based in Dumfries & Galloway. We bring together artists and community organizations to co-create projects, shape local plans, share knowledge, and foster enterprise, driving positive change through col...
Back in September our Creative Spaces Team; Anna, Sonah & James hosted their first event at the Stove - The Freshers Mixer. With live performances, goodie bags and a (slightly chaotic) quiz, listen to the team talking through the project and their experience of throwing a stowed-out party on Dumfries High Street 🕺 Creative Spaces is a Dumfries-based collective of young creatives, working with and advocating for our region’s young artists. Situated in the heart of Dumfries, Creative Sp...
As part of this programme, The Stove’s Artistic Director, Martin O’Neill, sat down for an insightful discussion with a panel of speakers whose expertise ranged from history to investigative journalism, Riso printing techniques, and working in the former news and print spaces of Dumfries’ high street. While examining the current landscape in Scottish grassroots print and journalism, the panel tackled how communities, creatives, and journalists can reclaim their agency while navigating an era m...
In this final episode of our 3 part series, we speak with artist and filmmaker duo Colin Tennent and Saskia Coulson of CT Productions. Throughout their project entitled Stories of Radical Landownership, the duo sought to co-create visual stories with the community landowners through a mixture of multimedia works, including photographs, audio recordings, and moving images. The pair wanted the communities to use the process as a way to reflect on their achievements, but also to cons...
Welcome to the Radical Land. he Galson Estate is a community-owned estate of 56,000 acres of coast, agricultural land and moor in the North West of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The estate comprises 22 villages running from Upper Barvas to Port of Ness with a population of nearly 2,000 people. The estate passed into community ownership on 12 January 2007 to be managed on their behalf by the Trust.
In this episode, we visit Abriachan Forest Trust near Inverness. A scattered rural community of about 130 people set high above the shores of Loch Ness in the Highlands of Scotland. In 1998 the community purchased 540 hectares of forest and open hill ground from Forest Enterprise. Since then, as a social enterprise, the Abriachan Forest Trust has managed this land to create local employment, improve the environment and encourage it’s enjoyment by the public through a network of spectacular pa...
Project curator Matt Baker sits down with Atlas Pandemica's bibliographer, Philip Palios. Philip is a writer, researcher and educator and his role as part of Atlas Pandemica has been to work alongside the project's artists to record and document the inspirations and identities behind each of the Atlas Pandemica explorations. You can find out more about the project by visiting www.atlaspandemica.org.
Project Curator Matt Baker sits down with TS Beall to discuss their project 'Fair/No Fair'. Fair/No Fair is a collaboration with Travelling Showpeople, in the context of the pandemic, who have both active and historic relationships to Dumfries’ traditional Fairs on the banks of the River Nith. The collaboration pivots around a series of discussions, forming a loose advisory group that has gathered information (in the form of stories/direct quotes/images) to become the foundation for creativ...
Project curator Matt Baker speaks with artist Katie Anderson about her Atlas Pandemica project 'Elsewhere'. ‘The High Street is somewhere we though we knew, and now it’s different, it’s elsewhere.’ When the lockdown struck, all activity at the Stove was put on hold and what started to emerge was a project titled Homegrown, gathering and sharing the conversations, creativity and new narratives being drawn in real time during the lockdown by Stove members and community. Elsewhere is a r...
Atlas Pandemica project curator Matt Baker sits down with Peter Smith to discuss his project 'Beauty in the Broken'. 'We are taking a journey into how philosophies of repair, tending and rebuilding can be a mindful practice that helps both individuals and a community heal. As covid-19 has broken us, we repair in a new, beautiful way. We don’t try to hide these breaks and damage, but we repair our town and community – creating something unique and powerfully beautiful. The starting ground li...
Project Curator Matt Baker speaks with writer JoAnne McKay about her project 'What Remains?' 'Dumfries has experienced pandemics before. The most notable are those from modern history: cholera in 1832 and 1848, and influenza in 1918 and 1919. Why? Because of what remains – written words and built environment; newspaper records and memorials. Yet even these pandemics are all but gone from mind and public discourse. My intention is to research the extent and nature of what remains from these e...
Project Curator, Matt Baker sits down with writer Karen Campbell to discuss her Atlas Pandemica project 'Here Is Our Story'. 'Karen is the Writer in Residence within D & G Council, using a mix of workshops and one-to-one discussions to write ‘Here Is Our Story’ – a collection of short stories and monologues, which will all be fictional, but founded on the real-life experiences of Council staff during the initial COVID response. In particular, she’ll be exploring the many small, often pe...
Atlas Pandemica Curator Matt Baker speaks with artist duo Robbie Coleman and Jo Hodges about their project 'Distance: Proximity: Loss'. The coronavirus pandemic is changing relationships and practices at the end of our lives affecting every aspect of the process of dying; how we support some ones passing, how we mark someone’s life, how we bury them and how we grieve. Distance: Proximity: Loss aims to explore how creative processes can be used in rethinking responses to the challenges prese...
In this episode, Atlas Pandemica Curator Matt Baker speaks with artist and movement practitioner Emma Jayne Park about her project 'The Geography of Power'. How do we organise information? Who gets to organise information? How does this impact decision-making? Who holds the knowledge? Do they hold the power? How do they share it? How do they relinquish it? Do they want to? Is reactive action leadership or recklessness? Do the values we aspire to align with our perception of leadership? Can ...
In this episode, project curator Matt Baker speaks with artist Mark Zygadlo about his project 'Landwatership'. Landwatership proposes that the vital and fundamental elements of our environment, land and water, are active members of our localised communities. It presupposes that no part of our environment is unaffected by human presence and no part of us is unaffected by our environment. These factors have been foregrounded during the Covid-19 pandemic. By focusing on the Glenmidge Burn...
A discussion with artist and researcher Jenna Macrory on her Atlas Pandemica project 'LGBTQ Voices'. 'My project is called LGBTQ Voices. It aims to engage the queer community by presenting the idea that hate speech can be viewed as the start of a dysfunctional conversation. Members of the LGBTQ community are often engaged in unsolicited conversation in the form of abuse on the street, however, as part of this community you quickly learn to silence yourself for your own safety, but this doesn...