Conversing Building in partnership with Fife College & HMP Dumfries

Postponed from October 16th | Closed Sunday’s

As part of this year’s Wild Goose Festival, the Stove’s Conversing Building project has been engaging with Fife College learners based at HMP Dumfries. Sharing inspirations and prompts from the festivals theme of Keep Looking Up, the learners have worked through a variety of creative mediums to respond through both creative writing and visual mediums including painting and drawing.

The works on display began during a creative workshop day exploring the background of the festival and it’s wider themes of migration, nature and of course, a celebration of our seasonal visitors – the geese!

Stop by the Stove Café during visitor hours to have a closer look at the work created.

All artworks are submitted anonymously.

Keep Looking Up

The migration of the barnacle goose has been a rich source for writers and artists for centuries. Before we were able to monitor their movements, there were many myths on the origins of the barnacle goose. Like the name suggests some used to believe that during the winter, barnacle geese turned into barnacles in the sea, as they disappeared after every summer leading many to question their whereabouts.

Their arrival is most noticeably heard by their calls in flight as they pass over the towns and villages of Scotland. As onlookers crane their necks skyward, the faint but distinctive ‘V’ formation affords us an opportunity to pause, to observe and to connect, for a small moment, with our natural environment.

That’s why our theme for this year is ‘Keep Looking Up’. We’re asking everyone to take a moment to pause, to look up and ponder their place in the natural world.

About Conversing Building

Conversing Building is an in-house Stove project that explores how communities and artists can interact with the Stove building and wider environments through visual means. Conversing Building considers all of the spaces in and around the Stove as potential locations for dialogue, activity and gathering.

The Stove Cafe hosts regular displays and exhibitions, both as part of the Stove’s activity and featuring ‘guest’ projects and artists with visiting works, conversational installations and displays – that seek to gather, share and create discussion in the town centre. 

About Fife College

The vision of Fife College is to transform the lives of our students through inspirations learning and teaching. Our mission is to deliver excellent opportunities for our students and work with them to develop their full potential with life enhancing skills, knowledge, experience and resilience that will shape their future success.