COVID MEMORIAL PROJECT MILESTONE
Scene Stirling is working to support the Remembering Together Stirling programme, alongside Stirling’s cultural partners and communities.
Remembering Together is a national programme of remembrance managed by Greenspace Scotland, and funded by the Scottish Government. It brings together communities and artists/creative practitioners in collective acts of reflection, remembrance, hope and healing as we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Here’s an update from lead co-creation artist Saffy Setohy who is working, alongside local visual artists/co-facilitators Lorna Swinney and Orla Stevens, to facilitate a series of creative workshops with community groups across Stirlingshire:
“Groups were specifically approached to ensure a range of lived experiences, demographics and geographic spread were involved in the project. These include William Simpsons Care Home, Braehead Gardens, students of Stirling University and Forth Valley College, Stirling Champions Board, and library users.
“200 activity packs have also been distributed to people via housebound library service and branches, foster carers, nursery staff, and mental health staff and services.”
The three artists have a shared interest in care, ritual and the restorative qualities of connecting with nature, as experienced by many during lockdown.
Saffy added: “Exploring these themes, the workshops and activity packs aim to stimulate conversation through mindful making and moving together - painting with colours that participants associate with care, printing with plants exploring changing seasons as metaphors for life and death, and weaving with words.”
The artists will gather a range of perspectives on the pandemic and ideas for how Stirlingshire could meaningfully mark this time.
An exhibition and presentation of the research will open to the public on 12th January 2023 at St Ninians Library, until 16th January. The exhibition and research will then tour to library branches across Stirlingshire, before being digitally archived. To find out more about the Rembering Together project, click here.
