
The Stove Network Podcast
The Stove Network is an arts and community organisation in the heart of Dumfries High Street. We’re a cafe, a meeting place and an arts & events venue with a diverse programme stretching across music and literature, visual and public art, film and theatre, to town planning, architecture and design.We use arts and creativity to encourage, to gather, learn and bring life back to our town centre. We see the arts not as something solely for an ‘arts audience’ but rather as a vital contribution to society on all fronts.At the heart of everything we do is a love for our town and wider region. As the only arts-led development trust in Scotland, we work alongside our local authority, community organisations, local businesses and charities to create a vision for the future of Dumfries High Street. We’re aiming to create a place where culture, community and enterprise work hand-in-hand to support a new vision of the High Street. Our podcast features exclusive content, interviews, news and more. Stay updated by hitting 'follow' or 'subscribe'.
The Stove Network Podcast
Off The Margin – the Future of Grassroots Media | A Panel Discussion Produced by The Stove Network & WWDN Digital
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 marked by an increasingly divided mass media and heightened public scrutiny regarding the accuracy and biases of printed media. This discussion revealed insights and sparked a hopeful community dialogue on the potential future of print, media, and journalism in Dumfries and Galloway.
The discussion directly followed a screening of the film-work Imprints in Time by artist John Wallace, documenting the master printmakers and enduring machinery still in use at Solway Print while uncovering the printing heritage of Dumfries town centre.
The panel comprised Judith Hewitt (Museums Curator East for the Dumfries and Galloway Council), Johnny Gailey (Out of the Blueprint Project Manager), Karen Goodwin (Investigative Journalist and Co-Editor of The Ferret), Pete Fortune (Doonhamer and Printmaker), and John Wallace (Artist & Filmmaker).
Each panellist brought unique and specialised knowledge to the discussion.