Remembering Together is a national programme of remembrance managed by greenspace scotland, bringing together communities and artists/creative practitioners in collective acts of reflection, remembrance, hope and healing.

Supported with funding from the Scottish Government, memorial projects were co-created in every local authority area of Scotland as communities worked with artists/creative practitioners to honour those that have lost their lives to Covid-19 and reflect on their own experiences.

Scene Stirling supported the Remembering Together Stirling programme together with the wider cultural partners and communities in Stirling. The lead co-creation artist was Saffy Setohy and the local reference group included representation from Stirling Council and the University of Stirling.

Welcome to

Remembering Together STIRLING

Our Approach

“ The pandemic hugely affected our sense of time and sensory aliveness, bringing us in touch with different cycles and seasons of life and death, beginnings and endings, and new rituals were adopted. Reflecting this, our Phase 2 project has been shaped by the seasonal calendar and Celtic Wheel of the Year. This has offered a framework for creativity, nature connection and community- different ways of being together and marking time, as we moved through the year-long timescale of the project.”
Lead artist, Saffy Setohy

Connection with nature has been proven to improve wellbeing and creativity exponentially, with this being highlighted during the pandemic. For Phase 2, lead artist Saffy Setohy worked again with Stirling based artist Lorna Swinney as co-facilitator, designer Orla Stevens, and a team of other artists and creatives, to facilitate a series of opportunities for creative connections - engaging with Stirling’s specific natural environments and bringing a sense of that indoors for those who cannot access it easily.

These opportunities followed the cycles of seasons, and of life, and took place across the Stirling region, with a different focus for each season of the year (Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer). The outcomes included events, multimedia artwork, printed resources and self-led kits, among other creative outputs.

Find out more about what we did for each season by clicking on the images below.

Being Together

Celebrating Life Through the Wheel of the Year

Artistic short film showcasing the project, created by Sean Hall of Vivid Affect Productions.

Watch

Connecting Together

Nature-inspired creative activities to tune into the seasons

This book will document the work done by the artists during the project along with activities for participants to try out.

Find out more

I am Saffy, an artist and facilitator from a dance background. I was commissioned by Greenspace Scotland and Scene Stirling to lead on Remembering Together across the region.

My brief for phase 1 was to spend time with communities to understand their experiences of the pandemic, what might feel meaningful to them going forward, and ideas for expressing this.

When we began Phase 1 of the project and meeting communities in 2022, it felt as if we were still very much in the shockwaves of the pandemic. We were, and still are, living through a time of climate crisis and deep systematic inequalities too. People’s lives have been touched in so many transforming ways by the pandemic, both good and bad. We started with what felt authentic to us - our strong connection with the rest of nature, and embodied creativity as a doorway to conversation. Working with 5 communities across Stirling in Phase 1, we co-facilitated a workshop journey through gentle movement, meditation, and making with our hands. This uncovered themes of care, ritual and solace in nature, which offered so many people sanctuary during lockdown. We emerged from Phase 1 of the project with a very open, expansive brief, but some things were clear- people needed to mark time in some way, to gather, and to connect with place, creativity and nature in inclusive, regenerative and tactile ways. People needed creative experiences and ways to gather.

In phase 2, the focus was on developing and realising these ideas with communities across the region. Intergenerational connection, deep sensory engagement with place and our embodied selves, regeneration, nature connection and healing, have all been at the heart of Phase 2 as we followed the Wheel of the Year.

I’d like to thank all the artist collaborators, community partners and participants, and the Scene Stirling/Artlink Central team, for wholeheartedly going on this journey of exploration, learning and healing together. The places we have worked with have also been a collaborator, infusing our work with inspiration and a deep sense of time.