Star gazing at Dumfries Museum

From Dumfries Museum

Stargazing Live 2015 - Solar Eclipse Special

A joint event with Dumfries Astronomy Society to celebrate the BBC’s Stargazing LIVE project and live television programmes - a nationwide campaign to get people exploring and learning about the sky above them.

Thursday 19 March 6.30-8.30pm

Join members of the Dumfries Astronomy Society and museum volunteers to learn more about solar eclipses and how to view them safely. Hands on activities for children and stargazing with the astronomers. Light refreshments will be available.

Friday 20 March 8.30 – 10.30am

As the moon and sun along and the world grows unusually dark come along to Dumfries Museum for a community eclipse viewing. Weather permitting the Camera Obscura can be used to see a projected view of the eclipse. Other safe methods of viewing the eclipse will also be available (you can use your solar observer made on Thursday evening).

If you plan to bring a group or school party to this event please call the museum in advance so that we can arrange best use of the Camera Obscura (Tel 01387 253374).

John Muir Artist Residency in Dunbar

From North Light Arts

North Light Arts and East Lothian Council are delighted to present the first John Muir Artist Residency at Dunbar Town House, Dunbar, East Lothian to celebrate the John Muir Festival 2015.

The artist will explore the theme of ‘Fertile Ground : Soil‘, in particular investigating the importance of East Lothian’s soil during International Year of Soil 2015. The resulting work will be shown in an exhibition at Dunbar Town House Museum and Gallery in May – June 2015.

Artist Proposals Deadline: 5pm Friday 28 February 2015

Artists Selection: Thursday 5 March 2015

Residency Timeframe: The John Muir Artist Residency will take place between 13 and 27 April covering the John Muir Festival on the 18 and 19 April 2015

Residency Base: Dunbar Town House Museum and Gallery

Exhibition: The artist will create an exhibition at Dunbar Town House Museum and Gallery in May – June 2015, which will include artwork or research resulting from the residency shown alongside selected pieces of the artists previous work. There is a separate budget for the exhibition.

Artists Residency Fee: Max fee including materials £1,000

The United Nations has proclaimed 2015 International Year of Soils, which offers a unique opportunity to address the crisis in soil sustainability. Soils are essential to our ecosystems, playing a key role in the carbon cycle, storing and filtering water, and improving resilience to floods and droughts. The residency will take place in and around the coastal town of Dunbar, East Lothian, this former fishing community lies in an intensely farmed rural area and is a rapidly growing commuter town for Edinburgh. Local community organisations are actively exploring sustainability and carbon reduction initiatives and in 2014 Dunbar was named Scotland’s first ‘Zero-waste town’.

Proposals are welcome from artists with a strong environmental and public engagement practice. The artist is expected to develop a project, which has public engagement as part of the process and they will deliver workshops related to their practice in the local community. The artist will explore the outlined theme ‘Fertile Ground: Soil’ and an artwork, documentation or piece of artistic research which results from their residency will be retained in the North Light Arts, John Muir Resource Archive.

Please send a maximum two-page artists project proposal along with the contact details for two referees and 4 digital images of your previous work to -

Tracy Morgan, North Light Arts, Programme Manager: infonorthlightarts@gmail.com
Full details on the North Light Arts website here

Landscape Photography Workshop with Roger Lever and Allan Wright

From Roger Lever

The Galloway Photography Collective’s last workshop for February is this Sunday 22nd February on Landscape with Allan Wright and Roger Lever. There are still one or two places available. If you want to book yours then go to the website following this link

Watch their Facebook page here for further workshops later in the year.

When
Sunday 22nd February – 9am to 5pm

Who
Roger Lever & Allan Wright

Course Description
Landscape Photography, has more to do with the art of “seeing” than camera controls and processing, growing that “seeing” ability is where it gets exciting. To explore landscape when there is prospect of bagging a stunning image can generate a wonderful edge of excitement. We help clients to express their own creativity and offer firsthand experience in the art and craft of producing better pictures.

– 8.30am Meet at Roger Levers Studio Dalbeattie – Coffee and discussion about cameras and particular subjects of interest to client
– 9.30am Leave for Location
Explore one or more of landscape , garden, beach, forest etc.
Hands on learning whilst taking photos
Packed lunch
New location, more photography
– 2.30pm return to studio
– 2.30pm Coffee and review of images
– 3-5pm demonstration and practice of editing, correcting, enhancing, and printing images.
– A4 print of best image per person.

Milestones - A Waymarking Sculpture Commission for NHS Aryshire and Arran

From Will Levi Marshall

NHS Ayrshire and Arran

Deadline: 27 February 2015 at 17:30

Outline 
A key to mental and physical health and well-being is an active lifestyle. Support to help patients enjoy the outdoors is built into the new hospital facilities. This project helps reinforce these aims by providing distance waymarks, or “milestones” around the campus as prominent landmarks with possible supportive text. These will be benchmarks for activity and pleasing visual objects in themselves. 

This project is to design, manufacture and install these waymarking interventions in the landscape to mark significant distances. Starting at key location points (such as the main entrance/car parking etc.) distances (10m 25m 50m 100m) will be annotated by sculptural interventions. Patients participating in rehabilitation programmes could aim to reach ever increasing milestone distance targets as part of this programme. The sculptures are visual punctuations, creating a place for contemplation and rest within the landscape. The locations may have additional supporting text clearly delineating distances in an illuminating and engaging way, for example “A harbour porpoise can travel around 10 metres in a second”. 
Whilst the text and sculptural forms to be made will be agreed as part of the design process, they should relate directly back to the landscape, flora and fauna of the Ayrshire coast as directed by the strategic goals of the Arts Strategy. 

Please email with a subject line "Milestones brief" for Full brief, application procedure and supporting documentation. 

Applications not in the format detailed in the application pack will be ineligible. 

Contractual Payment Details

Base budget comprises of £ 17,430 Of the budget it is assumed that £13,680 will be used for manufacture and install of the sculptures. This assumes £3,750 is available for artists design fees.

A further additional £1,200 is available for engineering certification or permissions if needed, and a modest sum is available for enabling works executed by the building contractor if required by the design agreed.

Location: East Ayrshire, North Ayrshire, South Ayrshire

For further information, please contact will.levi.marshall@btinternet.com (Will Levi Marshall), or call 01556 640399, or visit https://ayrshirehealthandarts.wordpress.com

The deadline is Friday 27 February 2015 at 17:30.

Atkins CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year

From Forest Art Works - Forestry Commission England

Now open for entries, the Atkins CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year competition is an international showcase for the very best in environmental photography and film. The competition offers a top prize of £5,000 and is free to enter

Launched in 2007 by the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM), and sponsored by Atkins, one of the worlds leading design, engineering and project management consultancies, the competition honours amateurs and professionals of all ages. It provides an opportunity for photographers to share images of environmental and social issues with international audiences, and to enhance our understanding of the causes, consequences and solutions to climate change and social inequality.

Man in the face of nature VII, Bogumil Kruzel

The prizes for the 2015 competition are:
Atkins CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year - £5000
Atkins CIWEM Young Environmental Photographer of the Year (25 years or under) - £1000
Atkins CIWEM Environmental Film of the Year - £1000
Atkins Cityscape Prize - £1000
Forestry Commission England Exhibition Award - One photographer will be invited to exhibit a solo exhibition at one of England’s public forests.

Entries will be judged from the open submission by the distinguished panel of judges:
Dr David Haley - Senior Research Fellow, Director - Ecology In Practice, Route Leader MA Art as Environment, Manchester Metropolitan University
Brigitte Lardinois - Deputy Director of the Photography and the Archive Research Centre at University of the Arts London
Tim Parkin - Landscape photographer and Editor of On Landscape
Hayley Skipper - Curator of Arts Development, Forestry Commission England
Stephen Vaughan - Photographer and Senior Lecturer, Bath Spa University and Plymouth University

Rainwater collection, Prasanta Biswas

How To Enter:

Open to all photographers, professional and amateur alike, the competition encourages entries that are contemporary, creative, resonant, original and beautiful. Entry is free and photographers may submit up to 10 works.
Deadline for entries: 7 April 2015, by 5pm GMT

For further information and to apply: www.epoty.org

Walk every day. Draw every day. See what happens...

From Sarah Keast

Hello,

I hope this finds you well

I am off to be artist in residence on Iona and live in this little hut for the month of February 2015.  I am going to keep a diary so you can check what I am up to on my web site and on my artists facebook page below.  The plan is: walk every day, draw every day and I am taking a printing press with me and hopefully something will result which is worth exhibiting for Spring Fling (23-25th May 2015 )   If you hear of big North Atlantic storms hitting the west of Scotland spare me a thought! 

Best wishes for 2015

Sarah Keast

Keep up to date with Sarah's residency 

On her website, available here

Or via facebook here

Walking the Woods and the Water at the Solway Centre

From David Borthwick

This is a free event but places are limited, please book here

Measure, Report and Reduce your carbon footprint with Creative Carbon Scotland

From Creative Carbon Scotland

Creative Carbon Scotland has now announced its training and support programme for Creative Scotland RFOs and others who are interested in measuring, reporting and reducing their carbon footprint. From April 2015 all Creative Scotland Regularly Funded Organisations will be required to report their carbon emissions for the period of April 2015 – March 2016.

To report on this period RFOs need to be ready to start measuring by 1st April 2015. To help you with this Creative Carbon Scotland is offering:
• Winter training workshops (January – March)
• NEW one-to-one meetings with our Carbon Reduction Adviser
• Email and phone support
• Access to online tools to simplify data gathering and carbon reporting

Through this support programme Creative Carbon Scotland will advise you on how best to use the information you gather to reduce your carbon footprint, save money and talk to audiences about your green work.
The key areas to gather information on will include:
• Energy and water (if you’re a venue or building)
• Waste
• Business travel, touring, artist travel

In addition to our online resources, our training programme offers one-to-one support and unique workshops. The winter workshop programme features workshops advising across the following areas:
• Venue-based organisations
• Office-based organisations
• Travel
• Touring
• Environmental Policies

More information can be found on our new updated Training page. Sign up today!

Momentum Open Call - Somerset Art Works

From Joyce Woodcock

A series of five site specific commissions to be presented across Somerset during Somerset Art Weeks Festival 2015 (3rd to 18th October 2015), in any media, taking a different approach to the theme of ‘Momentum’, setting the work within different environments and communities of Somerset.

Previous project from SAW: Night of Light, Art Weeks 2011, Hestercombe Garden. Photo by Seb King Details here

Proposals are invited from emergent to established artists, curators or artist-led groups working in any medium, including sound, film and artists video, photography, and performance and live art. The proposed projects can be either temporary or permanent (subject to permissions), and should engage with people and place in new and unique ways.

For full brief please download here: Momentum open call brief (final Dec 2014)

Applications by email only to – info@somersetartworks.org.uk

Applications must be received by 31 January 2015

For enquiries please contact SAW Office on 01458 253800 or alternatively email info@somersetartworks.org.uk.

Full details on the SAW website here

As not is

From Stan Bonnar

As not is

https://www.flickr.com/photos/stan_bonnars_artworks/16138294772/

Award success for Auchencairn Link Park

From BBC

A community garden planted on a patch of wasteland in a Dumfries and Galloway village has won a major new award. The Auchencairn link park has been named the overall winner of the first Carnegie Prize for Design and Wellbeing. It celebrates projects where local communities have played a leading role in improving public spaces. In Auchencairn, local people have created a recreational wildlife garden and a safe place for children to play.

Phoebe Marshall, who helped develop the park, said they were delighted with the recognition for their work.

Ms Marshall added: "Throughout, this project has been about people, and whilst community workshops and work parties are not always the simplest way to create a garden, it is an approach which creates great experiences, knowledge, new friendships and a beautiful space that will be used by the whole village for a range of activities.

She added: ''The project has really brought the community together and we are immensely proud of the energy and enthusiasm local people have given to transform Auchencairn link park from a disused field into the lovely garden that it is today''.

The prize was awarded by the Carnegie UK Trust, in partnership with the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS) and the Royal Society of Ulster Architects.

Full story available here

The Solway from the Sky

From Colin Tennant via Twitter

The Solway Firth Partnership commissioned Colin Tennant to make four short films of the Dumfries and Galloway coast earlier in the year - to forget about the dreich and the cold and remember back to the summer, check them out on youtube available here

Hopes remain for Star of Caledonia after funding dismay

From the Herald

"The chairman of the trust behind plans for a new £5m landmark on the Scottish border, which has been denied crucial funding from the national arts funding body, has vowed to continue with the project despite being denied crucial funding.

…

His plan for a huge abstract sculpture, designed by Cecil Balmond and Charles Jencks and inspired by Scottish scientific endeavour, had received development cash from the arts agency but has been denied the crucial cash.

Mr Houston said: "I remain determined to try to deliver this remarkable thing for Scotland and our region.

"The Star will be the single biggest thing that our region has seen for decades, signifying energy, innovation, confidence and ambition.

"Our region and Scotland now needs the public sector to demonstrate similar ambition to help turn it into reality."

Read the full article on the herald website here

Young Artists go Green for Christmas

From The Stove Network

Great news from the Young Stove this week as they embark on their first public project as part of the Dumfries Christmas Lights switch on. The Young Stove is a new and evolving part of the Stove Network which looks to provide more opportunities for young people in Dumfries. If you’d like to be a part of the growing Young Stove team, please get in touch via email katie@thestove.org.

______

A local group of creative young people belonging to a new organisation The Young Stove get into the Christmas spirit in time for Dumfries’ Christmas Lights Switch On! The group will be channelling the idea of a Natural Christmas by hosting an ambitious community led arts project in Dumfries town centre on the 27^th November. By using handcrafted gifts and natural materials the group hope to inspire a return to the traditional values of Christmas as a time of giving and a break from modern consumerism.

Young Stove member Emily Cooper said. ‘Come and find us from 3pm in Queensberry Square on 27^th November – look for the amazing Christmas tree construction, exchange a Christmas wish and make a lantern present.’

The Young Stove is the latest project of arts collective The Stove Network, in development led and directed by young people ranging from 18 to 30. The project aims to create new opportunities for emerging artists and students to get involved in the local arts scene as part of the wider organisation. The Young Stove is recruiting new members, if you would like to be involved please come along to the lights switch on and to find out more about future projects and introduce yourself!

The Young Stove represents not only an exciting chance for young people to form their own creative community but for them to have a wider positive impact on the community in general and the creative landscape of Dumfries and Galloway. As one Young Stove member Michael Moore points out “The potential for art growth in the region is big, we just need that energy to be realised. Nothing beats apathy better than art”.

From 3pm until the Lights Switch on a 6pm, artists from the Young Stove collective invite members of the public to join with them in an exchange of giving and sharing. Look out for them around the Bakers Oven on the High Street. This, the first of many more such projects from The Young Stove, will encourage people to celebrate Christmas with a conscience, an ethos that is deeply instilled in the heart of the group and will undoubtedly make this an un-missable event in the Dumfries arts scene.

Green Art Lab Alliance and ASCUS Micro-residency

From Creative Carbon Scotland

Final GALA general meeting set for Glasgow in March 2015

The Green Art Lab Alliance brings together 19 artistic and cultural partners from across Europe to explore the connections between arts and environmental sustainability. In March 2015 we’re hosting the final meeting in collaboration with Glasgow Arts at Tramway. We’ll be announcing our exciting plans for this three day meeting shortly so keep an eye on our events page.

More details available here

ASCUS Micro-Residency

Announcing a new ASCUS micro-residency at the Centre for Immunity, Infection and Evolution (CIIE) at the University of Edinburgh. Apply by 1 December 2014.

More details available here 

MPA and SAC Consultation on Management Proposals

From the Solway Firth Partnership

MPA and SAC Consultation on Management Proposals

Views are being sought on proposed measures to protect some of Scotland’s most important marine sites including Luce Bay Special Area of Conservation.

Flood Tide at Luce Bay Image: David Baird

A 12 week public consultation has been launched about the Scottish Government’s new management proposals for 11 recently-designated Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and nine Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) in inshore waters. As well as inviting responses on the Scottish Government website, a series of 14 drop-in events are being held around the country as part of the consultation. This will include an event at Stranraer Library on Thursday 27 November between 3pm and 9pm.

Scotland’s Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead said: “Scotland’s seas are a vast and vital natural resource and it is our duty to protect and enhance it for future generations. Through our network of MPAs, we have already identified which sites should be protected – now we want to hear views on the new management proposals. Our proposals for these 20 high priority sites have been developed following discussions with the fishing industry, environmental organisations and local authorities and are designed to ensure that the conservation objectives for each site are met, in line with expert advice from Scottish Natural Heritage.

This consultation is an opportunity for anyone who is interested in the protection of our seas to express their views about our proposals, and we are keen to hear from as many people as possible.”

For more information read here

Landscape, Wilderness and the Wild at Newcastle University

From Newcastle University

26-28th March 2015, Newcastle University, UK

This international cross-disciplinary conference, organised by the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University, will bring together scholarly communities for knowledge exchange and debate.  It aims to consider the discourses that swirl around concepts of wilderness, wildness, wildscape, re-wilding, wilding and the wild.   It will seek to explore the place of these notions in the contemporary imagination, whilst giving an account of their continuing agency for academics, professionals and all those engaged in landscape issues.  We look forward to welcoming participants from around the world including academics, journalists, artists, writers, creative practitioners, activists and landscape practitioners across disciplines such as conservation management, environmental philosophy, countryside planning, landscape architecture, cultural geography, literature, fine arts, and other subject areas in the arts, humanities and sciences.  

Keynote Speakers:

Professor Bill Adams : Conservation, Authenticity and Wild Nature in an Age of Management

Professor Bill Adams holds the Moran Chair in Conservation and Development at Cambridge University. His research focuses on the choices and conflicts between development and conservation. His writing on the subject includes:‘Against Extinction, the Story of Conservation’ (2004).

Dr Steve Carver : Re(al)wilding: making space for true nature in the British countryside

Dr Steve Carver is Director of the Wildland Research Institute at the University of Leeds and has worked extensively on the development of wild land mapping and evaluation methodologies and has tested and applied these across a variety of locations and spatial scales including Scotland, England, Britain, Europe, and the USA.  

Jay Griffiths : The Wildness Within

Jay Griffiths is the award-winning writer and author of ’Wild: An Elemental Journey’ (2008) and ‘Kith: the Riddle of the Childscape’ (2013).  She was born in Manchester and studied English Literature at Oxford University.

Dr Anna Jorgensen : Arcadia? A landscape typology of urban wilderness

Dr Anna Jorgensen is Managing Editor Landscape Research and Co-Editor of ‘Urban Wildscapes,’ one of the first edited collections of writings about urban ‘wilderness’ landscape.  

Paul Kingsnorth : The Anthropocene Fallacy

Paul Kingsnorth is a poet and novelist.  He is a former deputy-editor of The Ecologist and a co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project. His writings include 'The Wake' (2014), ‘Kidland’ (2011) and ‘Uncivilization’ (2009).

Full details available on the university website here where conference registration is now live.

Patti Lean @ Catstrand

From Patti Lean

A great chance to catch some of Patti's work at the Catstrand until the end of this month, including new work from her recent residency in Iceland this summer.

'We are thrilled to be exhibiting the work of local artist Patti Lean at the CatStrand throughout November.  Patti  lives and works near Dunscore, Dumfries. She studied History of Art at Edinburgh University, then completed a BA (Hons) and a Master of Contemporary Fine Art at the University of Cumbria. She is influenced by contemporary abstract art, and makes frequent visits to Seawhite Studios in West Sussex to study with the abstract painter John Skinner.  Patti describes her work as “a response to the idea of the ‘continuous act of seeing’ that comes with hiking and walking in the environment; not only seeing, but also experiencing the sensation of rain, wind, snow etc., and hearing the sounds of the outdoors.” 

Olafsfjörður, Iceland: hiking study

(Limnology/Oceanology Series)

2014.  I

Exhibition is FREE and the work is for sale. For more info contact CatStrand 01644 420374 '

Short Film Screenings @ RBC Film Theatre

These really great short documentary films about artists in Dumfries and Galloway are well worth a watch! If you missed their first screening back in May, they will be screened tomorrow night at the RBC in Dumfries as part of the SW Picture Show.

From Belle Doyle

The UWS are hosting another screening of the short documentary films made by local filmmakers about artists in the region in May (just before Spring Fling).  Nick Higgins from UWS will be giving some feedback on the films and talking generally about opportunities for more documentary film-making from 5.30 to 6 pm.  We will then be screening the documentaries from 6 pm onwards.  There will be a glass of wine afterwards and a chance for socialising after all the screenings (the films are only 2 minutes long).

So everyone is very welcome to come along - if you want to learn more about potential opportunities specifically for documentary film-making, come along at 5.30.  If you would like to see the films, the screenings should start around 6pm.  Just come into the auditorium whenever you arrive.

Why Moffat? And the invention of Environment

From Alan Thomson, Annandale and Eskdale Arts Convenor

Why Moffat? This question has become a recurring refrain as the stature and scope of the partnership between Moffat Book Events and the All Russia State Library for Foreign Literature has developed over three years.

Initially the answer was straightforward. Russia: Lessons and Legacy – The Alexander Men Conference 2012 was developed from an idea discussed by two old friends, Dr Ekaterina Genieva, Director General of the Library and Moffat resident Elizabeth Roberts.
During the planning and delivery of TRANSlation TRANSformed – contemporary aspects of translation between Russian and English, a slightly pejorative tone could be detected in the question, as if to imply that an international academic conference could not succeed in a small Scottish town. This time Moffat itself provided the answers in the manner in which it both welcomed and delighted the delegates. Moffat has been serving the needs of visitors for more than 200 years and knows its business very well, shop assistants and hospitality sector staff are friendly and helpful, while local people were welcoming and keen to engage with our overseas delegates. So much so that the library commissioned two young artists to study the town in some detail earlier this year. The result of these residencies, an exhibition entitled ‘An Anatomy of a Small Scottish Town’ opens in Moscow next week. I am not sure if our Russian friends understand the term ‘Place Making’ but they certainly appreciate the way in which the community of Moffat interacts with them, in and around the town’s public spaces. www.artofgeography.com describes ‘Sense of Place’ as the ‘combination of characteristics that makes a place special and unique’ and ‘involves the human experience in a landscape, local knowledge and folklore’.

These last three points were covered at Moffat Book Events most recent conference; Lermontov 200. They were discussed by Claire Lamont, Emeritus Professor of English Romantic Literature at Newcastle University and a specialist in Scottish literature of the 18th and early 19th century and Dr Sigrid Riewerts, Reader at the Gutenberg University, Mainz and Scottish Studies Fellow at Edinburgh University, where with German and Scottish colleagues she is editing a new version of Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Their topic ‘Landscape, Myth and Romanticism’ was designed to highlight how the work of our own Scott and Hogg was part of the pan-continental movement that inspired Lermontov. This was achieved.
Landschap was a apparently a Dutch word for a tract of land and what happened on it and was adopted by Dutch artists in the 16th century as a label for their work, when they began to develop the genre of painting countryside scenes.
A character called Barr, trading out of Berwickshire, brought the term to this country in 1598, but it was 34 years after people were introduced to the concept of appreciating ‘landscape’ painted on canvas that the usage expanded to describe what people could see around them.

Landscape art as popularised by the Dutch

Sterling’s analysis of his brilliant Sartor Resartus, in which he mocks Carlyle for making up words: "... and first as to the language. A good deal of this is positively barbarous. 'Environment', ' vestural', 'stertorous', 'visualized', 'complected', and others to be found I think in the first twenty pages,...are words, so far as I know, without any authority."
Environmentalists might be amused to discover that Carlyle did indeed make up the ’barbarous’ word Environment as he could find no English translation of the German Umgebung.
Yet just 175 years ago, hardly anybody spoke about "the environment," not even romantic nature poets. "Environment" was just a slightly high-flown word that meant "surroundings." When in 1827 Thomas Carlyle wrote (in an essay on Goethe) "in such an environment of circumstances," an editor should have trimmed it back as a redundancy.