In this final episode of our 3 part series, we speak with artist and filmmaker duo Colin Tennent and Saskia Coulson of CT Productions. 

Throughout their project entitled Stories of Radical Landownership, the duo sought to co-create visual stories with the community landowners through a mixture of multimedia works, including photographs, audio recordings, and moving images. The pair wanted  the communities to use the process as a way to reflect on their achievements, but also to consider the future challenges they might face. Working alongside Bridgend Farmhouse in Edinburgh, South West Mull & Iona Development, North Harris Trust and Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust, the final works are a series of photographs and a short film in Gaelic and English. The work represents their brief dive into the deep, rich world of community land ownership. The works are testimony to this moment in time and the ambition of community landowners during a very remarkable year. 

Welcome to the Radical Land. 

he Galson Estate is a community-owned estate of 56,000 acres of coast, agricultural land and moor in the North West of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The estate comprises 22 villages running from Upper Barvas to Port of Ness with a population of nearly 2,000 people. The estate passed into community ownership on 12 January 2007 to be managed on their behalf by the Trust.  

In this episode, we visit Abriachan Forest Trust near Inverness.

A scattered rural community of about 130 people set high above the shores of Loch Ness in the Highlands of Scotland. In 1998 the community purchased 540 hectares of forest and open hill ground from Forest Enterprise. Since then, as a social enterprise, the Abriachan Forest Trust has managed this land to create local employment, improve the environment and encourage it’s enjoyment by the public through a network of spectacular paths, family suited mountain bike trails, innovative outdoor learning as well as health and well-being opportunities.

We speak with Suzanne, a community member and manager of the forest trust, alongside artist Richard Bracken, who has been in residence with the trust since mid 2020. During this time, Richard has worked closely with the local community in the design and build of several hand-crafted walking sticks, each bearing a poetic inscription, in which scenery, skies and people intertwine with purpose, responsibility and invitation. 

Project curator Matt Baker sits down with Atlas Pandemica's bibliographer, Philip Palios. 

Philip is a writer, researcher and educator and his role as part of Atlas Pandemica has been to work alongside the project's artists to record and document the inspirations and identities behind each of the Atlas Pandemica explorations. 

You can find out more about the project by visiting www.atlaspandemica.org.

Project Curator Matt Baker sits down with TS Beall to discuss their project 'Fair/No Fair'.

Fair/No Fair is a collaboration with Travelling Showpeople, in the context of the pandemic, who have both active and historic relationships to Dumfries’ traditional Fairs on the banks of the River Nith. The collaboration pivots around a series of discussions, forming a loose advisory group that has gathered information (in the form of stories/direct quotes/images) to become the foundation for creative outcomes. 

Project curator Matt Baker speaks with artist Katie Anderson about her Atlas Pandemica project  'Elsewhere'.

‘The High Street is somewhere we though we knew, and now it’s different, it’s elsewhere.’

When the lockdown struck, all activity at the Stove was put on hold and what started to emerge was a project titled Homegrown, gathering and sharing the conversations, creativity and new narratives being drawn in real time during the lockdown by Stove members and community.

Elsewhere is a research project that looks to re-locate the online creative practice of Homegrown in the High Street of Dumfries as means of exploring public space during a time when we as a community are responding to, and recovering from the effects of COVID on our sense of place.'

Atlas Pandemica project curator Matt Baker sits down with Peter Smith to discuss his project 'Beauty in the Broken'.

'We are taking a journey into how philosophies of repair, tending and rebuilding can be a mindful practice that helps both individuals and a community heal.

As covid-19 has broken us, we repair in a new, beautiful way. We don’t try to hide these breaks and damage, but we repair our town and community – creating something unique and powerfully beautiful.

The starting ground lies in Japanese philosophies of Wabi Sabi & Kintsui and worked out through the practice of Rock Gardens. Wabi-sabi is succinctly  described as ‘the beauty in imperfections’.

Kintsugi is the repairing of broken things, making them something beautiful in a new way. This is best seen in pottery, where broken shards are reconnected with gold seams making beautiful pieces.'

Project Curator Matt Baker speaks with writer JoAnne McKay about her project 'What Remains?'

'Dumfries has experienced pandemics before. The most notable are those from modern history: cholera in 1832 and 1848, and influenza in 1918 and 1919. Why? Because of what remains – written words and built environment; newspaper records and memorials. Yet even these pandemics are all but gone from mind and public discourse. My intention is to research the extent and nature of what remains from these earlier pandemics in our public archives and museums and in our civic and sacred spaces, and to look at accessioning practice in relation to the current pandemic.'