REMEMBERING TOGETHER FIFE
Remembering Together has commissioned artists/creatives in every one of Scotland’s 32 local authority areas to co-create Covid memorials (in the widest sense of the word) with people and their communities by June 2024. Community action and the arts are two of the most important conduits for Scotland’s recovery from Covid-19.
This project is Scotland-wide, funded by the Scottish Government and facilitated by Greenspace Scotland, and endeavours to honour the people we have lost, mark what has been lost and changed in our lives and preserve the best of what we have learned and created together during the Covid pandemic.
Covid touched every life in Scotland. Through Remembering Together Fife we all have an opportunity to reflect, connect, and make sense of all that has been gained, as well as all that has been lost. In so doing we will be better placed to look ahead to the future with a shared empathy, optimism and deeper sense of togetherness.
As the commissioned artist in Fife for the project, my objective is to engage Fife’s communities in a co-created artistic response to the Covid Pandemic with the hope of co-creating a meaningful memorial in Fife by June 2024.
Since August 2022, I have been engaging with participants from a wide range of communities and groups across Fife to share their experiences during lockdown and gauge what they feel an appropriate memorial to Covid may be.
Over several months we created camera obscuras to act as the conduit for recording their stories, ideas and experiences over the last three years, resulting in a collective of cameras made up of individual experiences. The carcass of each camera provided a surface to produce honest, varied, open responses to the last two years, whilst acting as a simple metaphor for our lives being turned upside-down.
I also converted an old horsebox into a travelling camera obscura, depicting our ‘upturned worlds’ as I travelled around Fife during the engagement phase. This doubles as a ‘mobile studio’ to enable more accessibility.
Folk were encouraged to reflect, connect, and make sense of all that has been gained, as well as all that has been lost in the hope of being better placed to look ahead to the future with a shared empathy, optimism and deeper sense of togetherness. These workshops enabled a reflective period, often therapeutic in nature, where participants stopped to consider the last two years and the effect this period had had on their lives.
Please check back over the coming year to follow progression of the project. More info can be found at: rememberingtogether.scot
