CURRENT PROJECTS
REMEMBERING TOGETHER | FIFE
In 2022, Greenspace Scotland was given funding by the Scottish Government to initiate and commission artists in every local authority across Scotland to co-create something with communities to sensitively mark the pandemic. The Scotland-wide project is called Remembering Together
I was privileged to be appointed the role of Lead Artist for Fife, and began a period of community engagement to discover what communities felt would resonate.
UP-TURNED WORLDS | Mobile Camera Obscura | Co-creating with communities across Fife
Following a period of extensive consultation, communities demonstrated their desire to forge something with a positive impact and legacy in response to acknowledging this difficult shared experience. They decided that the Fife element of the RT project should have a focus on investment in its people at its heart, specifically kickstarting our collective journey to wellbeing. This would provide a path to a positive legacy growing out of a shared trauma.
Communities focussed on the vital role Fife’s landscape played daily during lockdown and were keen to mark this period by co-creating something which celebrates our rich landscape, encouraging us to spend more time outdoors engaging with it. They noted barriers to accessing activities designed to boost our mental health and voiced their desire to overcome this.
They highlighted a desire for free and accessible ‘process-based’ activities using materials found within our landscape, drawing on the age-old idea that busy hands lead to calm, healthy minds. They hoped these creative activities could bring people out of isolation and begin to address their decline in confidence and mental health, initially as a reactive response to our current wellbeing, but ultimately to help support a more preventative approach.
The documentation of project activities spanning the last two years will contribute to a small-run bespoke publication, ‘PROCESS’, to sensitively mark this period. This will consist of a single, long, continuous page – opening out like a concertina. This folded page will sit nestled inside a bespoke archival casing - doubling as a camera obscura - serving as a reminder to when our worlds were upturned.
This handbound object will become a co-created visual diary of sorts, depicting images of participants’ responses created from foraged and natural materials, with additional ‘how-to’ links for others to freely access.
Utilising the language of Floriography, by drawing upon the meanings and symbolisms attached to plants and flowers, will enable an expression of participant’s emotions and feelings gathered during this engagement, in an understated and non-verbal way.
The publication will mark this period by binding the collection of images, reflections, words, and fragments gathered to form a collective expression of love, loss, strength & renewal shared by communities across Fife.
This will be a limited publication, gifted to appropriate public bodies, organisations & groups across Fife as an engagement tool, but will also be fully accessible online through our Partner’s website (Fife Coast & Countryside Trust) in the Autumn of 2024.
To get involved with this project, please follow these links below:
