The Stove Network is community-led organisation that uses creativity as a tool to support local people to be involved in the future of their own places in Dumfries and Galloway. They have recently announced a new project in response to the current COVID-19 Pandemic, shifting their field of operation for community, creativity, care and gathering.

‘Home Grown’ is a project to engage the creative community, both regionally in Dumfries and Galloway and nationally, explore themes of resilience through four values: Insight, Perseverance, Open-Heartedness and Solidarity.

The Home Grown project invites people to explore the four values through a series of creative challenges, conversations, commissions and activities – all of which can be done in isolation and through connecting with one another through the internet. In doing so, The Stove Network hopes to build and maintain resilience in the present, as well as build hope and strategies of change for the future. The Stove will record these projects, constructing a new folklore of this experience that we have all gone through together as a community and as a planet.

The Creative Challenges launched at the beginning of April, starting with the Memory Jar challenge, in which people were asked to respond to the question ‘What memories come in times of silence?’ and create a memory jar full of things found in the home or items which have been gathered during daily exercise. The next few weeks will see more challenges including a creative photography challenge and a time lapse challenge.

The Stove Network are also offering weekly micro-commissions to Stove Members who are being asked to respond to one of the four values. The responses can be in any form, including music, sound art, film, collage, visual approaches, sculptural or digital. Each week, a new artist is selected and their work is shared on The Stove Network platforms.

Homegrown is exactly what the Stove is all about, and what it continues to be. Responsive, locally initiated, developed and owned.

For more information and how to take part, please visit the Home Grown webpage: www.thestove.org/homegrown

(Updated provided by The Stove Network)