Working with a different community over the Lent period leading to Easter, I was part of a project to bring symbolism and mystery into the worship setting at St John’s church, Dumfries. Working with other members of the Quartz creative group attached to the church, my job was to create a fitting conclusion to the…

“Everything you can imagine is real.” Picasso. To counter the evil emanating from Putin’s brain, and many others like him right now, we must keep believing that as artists we can counter this force with an oppositional creative and positive energy which is ultimately stronger. Otherwise, why bother to do anything as an artist? Just…

Where does the real nature of power lie? Painted and screen-printed leaded and copper foiled stained glass panel – 2023, Andy Brooke When we still lived in Essex back in 2019 I took photos of Sizewell B nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast. At the time local people were protesting the siting of a…

“The focus of creative placemaking is to bring under-represented voices from the community into conversations about the future of the area in which they live, through active creative projects. To bring together people, communities, groups, and organisations, public, private and third sector agencies to develop common ground on community-led planning and enterprise.” Matt Baker of…

From building demolition to a new stained glass construction group At the recent KnowOnePlace creative placemaking conference we were told in a keynote speech by Indy Johar that we need to de-materialise the world in order to survive as a species. The cost to the environment needs to be factored in to every decision and…

In the latter stages of the first phase of our project we are learning some fundamental lessons in the meaning of partnership and the impact that a breakdown in trust can have on a community project. The condemned outdoor gallery 1 Imagine posters and large scale artworks made by residents telling their thoughts about living…

May has been a more reflective month for our team after a series of pop-ups and a field trip. There is a lot to process and think about for the next stages of what we are doing. In the middle of the craziness of helping nine or ten young people make a coil pot, there…

Last week I went down to St Mary’s church in Wivenhoe, Essex where I used to live, to visit the freshly installed window which I made last year in Dumfries. It has been a long journey in more ways than one and the boat seems to symbolise the epic process of making the window. Starting…

We’ve now had two pop-ups in Lochside and a trip out to Taliesin near Castle Douglas. Both were great events and this blog is a reflective memory of those times. Towards the end of our time at Taliesin we all (most of us) played Kicking the Can which is a game for any number of…

We are moving onwards with our project in Lochside – a tent has been commissioned and made and we have pitched it first in Auchencairn (to check it out) and then in Lochside for our first pop-up event, when upwards of 25 folk from the area came and made some art and ate some food…

This feels like an interim time in our WWDN project, so a good time for some more reflections on what we are doing. As we await the outcome of planning permission to site our promised portacabin, it strikes me that our project is still largely hidden, a promise of things not yet delivered. But, like…