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
Atlas Pandemica: Karen Campbell
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 personal and spontaneous decisions that staff might have been making throughout the pandemic, and the ‘ripples’ those decisions have made, both for them, the way they work, and the communities they serve.
As a former Council officer herself, she’s hoping that, as well as documenting this moment in time, her residency will give Council staff the space and time to reflect creatively themselves on what they’ve been through, to acknowledge the different ways they’ve been working, and what that has meant. Are they proud? What might have helped them better – more support? Less barriers? What guided them – gut instinct? Kindness and care? Were they liberated or scared? Were the decisions they made more immediate and less bureaucratic – and if so, do we want to sustain that new, more autonomous, people-centred way of working into the future?’