From Fishwives to Factory Girls: Arbroath Women’s Heritage Trail

The Arbroath Women’s Heritage Trail specially devised by Blythe Stockdale as part of Arbroath2020+1. 
Draws attention to the inspiring nature of women’s contributions to Arbroath and wider society through stories from voices often overlooked. 

Beginning at the Fit O’ the Toon, this trail leads the audience through the streets in which Arbroath’s fishwives, factory girls and activists once lived, worked and campaigned.Arbroath’s Audio-Guided Heritage Trails: July

Arbroath Woman's Heritage Trail

Arbroath Heritage Audio Trail

Declaration of Arbroath Audio Trail

An Arbroath audio heritage trail written and narrated by Blythe Stockdale for Arbroath2020+1. The Industrial Revolution Heritage Trail.
Featuring Steve Byrne with Arbroath school pupils singing 'Awa wi ma laddie' As part of the Local voices project. 
Originally written by Scottish folk song writer Mable Skelton about Arbroath Mill works.

Steaming Ahead

Steaming Forward

Recording of an In Conversation with artist Luke Pell in conversation with Karine Neill and Chris Kelly from Tayside Healthcare Arts Trust about the work they do; different ideas and practices of care; and the part they believe artmaking and creativity play in community, connection; recovery and wellbeing. Recorded 30 July 2021 at Hospitalfield.

In Conversation: Luke Pell And Tayside Healthcare Arts Trust

A Conversation at Hospitalfield between curator and writer Roger Malbert and artist Mick Peter where they will discuss drawing, both in relationship to their work as well as the drawings that inspire and interest them.

The conversation begins with Roger Malbert introducing Mick Peter's work. 

This event was programmed especially to accompany Mick Peter‘s exhibition Gerroff!! (Or User Feedback) which is currently open across Hospitalfield’s Gardens. Gerroff!! (or User Feedback) is a series of sculptural scenes that create a narrative trail at Hospitalfield humorously addressing the ‘rules’ of engagement with art.

https://hospitalfield.org.uk/visit/events/mick-peter-and-roger-malbert-talk-on-drawing/

Hospitalfield Summer Programme 2021

On Drawing: Conversation between Roger Malbert and Mick Peter

This podcast is part of an online series titled The Making of a Pageant: 1947-2005 which is available to view at www.arbroathfestival.com. In the conversation the speakers discuss the social history of the Pageants in Arbroath and how the Festival drew on this history in 2020 and 2021. 

www.arbroathfestival.com

To learn more about the history of Pageantry in the UK and a thorough history of each Pageant in Arbroath, visit The Redress of the Past website www.historicalpageants.ac.uk 

The Podcast was recorded in July 2021 and was directed and edited by Cicely Farrer at Hospitalfield and presented by Kirsten Wilson at Hospitalfield. 

This podcast is part of an online series titled The Making of a Pageant: 1947-2005 which has been made possible with funding from the National Heritage Lottery Fund. The partner on this Podcast is The AHRC funded Project The Redress of the Past.

The Making of a Pageant: The Past and the Present in Arbroath and Beyond

Autumn Garden Talks at Hospitalfield
To celebrate the restoration of Hospitalfield’s Victorian fernery we invite experts and to discuss ferns, garden history, decolonisation of the garden and working in the community, and the importance and culture around heritage seeds, potatoes and apples.

Recording of Fern Fever
Saturday 30 October 2021

Professor Mary Gibby former Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh as well as a former president of the British Pteridological Society and Dr Bridget Laue, of the British Pteridological Society, in conversation discussing the history of ferns in cultivation.

The Victorian era was the heyday of the amateur naturalist. Pteridomania is generally considered a British eccentricity, but while it lasted, fern ‘madness’ invaded all aspects of Victorian life. Ferns and fern motifs appeared everywhere, in homes, gardens, art and literature. Their images adorned rugs, tea sets, chamber pots, garden benches – even custard cream biscuits.
Originally marketed in the 1830s as plants that appealed only to intelligent people, ferns soon became a nationwide phenomenon. The more exotic ferns you could find the better and if you had a fern collection you needed a fernery.

The fernery at Hospitalfield was restored in 2021 by architects Caruso St John and populated with ferns from the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh.

GARDEN TALK: Fern Fever

Martha Adonai Williams, Glasgow-based grower and writer and Rachel Pimm, researcher and artist, talk about garden language, eating weeds empowering people through gardening and the possibility of bringing a decolonial lens to the language of horticulture.

GARDEN TALK: Garden Communities

Morgan Quaintance
Limpid Lives: making politics public through lyrical performance

In this presentation and discussion Morgan Quaintance will explore plain speech as an impactful and affective device used to deliver complex information through song and performance. If one of the purposes of the living newspaper is to empower audiences by facilitating the acquisition of knowledge, then the potential democratic transparency and inclusivity of lyrical music (i.e. accessible to those who cannot read) is arguably one of the most effective tools available to those working within or expanding out from the New Deal format. Using Dalit activism, performance poetry, Senegalese Hip Hop, and the Industrial Workers of the World as source materials we’ll be encouraged to think through the possibilities of lyrical performance, and potentially try some of our own.

 

Morgan Quaintance is a London-based artist and writer.

His moving image work has been shown and exhibited widely at festivals and institutions including: MOMA, New York; Mcevoy Foundaton for the Arts, San Francisco; Konsthall C, Sweden; David Dale, Glasgow; European Media Art Festival, Germany; Alchemy Film and Arts Festival, Scotland; Images Festival, Toronto; International Film Festival Rotterdam; and Third Horizon Film Festival, Miami.

He is the recipient of the 2021 Jean Vigo Prize for Best Director at Punto de Vista, Spain, for the film Surviving You, Always; the 2020 Best Experimental Film award at Curtas Vila Do Conje, Portugal , and the 2020 New Vision Award at CPH:DOX, both for the film South (2020).

Over the past ten years, his critically incisive writings on contemporary art, aesthetics and their socio-political contexts, have featured in publications including Art Monthly, the Wire, and the Guardian, and helped shape the landscape of discourse and debate in the UK.

Hospitalfield International Summer School
Now What: A Living Newspaper
FIELDWORK 2021
Organised with artists Bik Van der Pol

FIELDWORK – Now What: A Living Newspaper Summer School
4pm on Friday 13 August until 9pm on Sunday 15 August

FIELDWORK International Summer School returned to Hospitalfield on site through a participatory programme of workshops, talks and performances focussing on The Living Newspaper. We invited participants to camp and eat with us on site, joining an experimental programme of collective learning.

https://hospitalfield.org.uk/visit/events/fieldwork-international-summer-school-2021/

Morgan Quaintance: Limpid Lives. Now What: A Living Newspaper Summer School

Hospitalfield International Summer School

Now What: A Living Newspaper

FIELDWORK 2021
Organised with artists Bik Van der Pol

FIELDWORK – Now What: A Living Newspaper Summer School
4pm on Friday 13 August until 9pm on Sunday 15 August

FIELDWORK International Summer School returned to Hospitalfield on site through a participatory programme of workshops, talks and performances focussing on The Living Newspaper. We invited participants to camp and eat with us on site, joining an experimental programme of collective learning.

The Living Newspaper, ran in the USA from 1935 – 1939, as part of the federally funded arts program established under the Works Progress Administration under President Roosevelt’s New Deal. This was the white heat of the depression after the Wall Street crash in 1929 and this approach to theatrical performance rejected the conventions of Broadway Theatre, and instead encouraged social justice through the telling of stories of the day. With its roots in earlier European theatre, the programmes that emerged were ambitiously scripted productions which focussed on contemporary conditions such as housing, labour, disease and social stigma. The Federal Theatre Project was disbanded by the US Government in 1939 after it was deemed too political by the Un-American Activities Committee.

The programme brought us together to focus on all the parts of the Living Newspaper production process; writing, costume and prop making, performance, videography and reflection.

The Programme organised with Bik Van der Pol included contributions from Ania Nowak, Morgan Quaintance, Anna Orton & Alison Brown and Laura Haynes.

https://hospitalfield.org.uk/visit/events/fieldwork-international-summer-school-2021/

Introduction by Bik Van der Pol to Now What? A Living Newspaper Summer School

Soundwalk composition created in collaboration with an Angus-based community group, inspired by Hospitalfield's medicinal garden and personal experiences of exploring the garden and grounds.

Commissioned by Hospitalfield and THAT (Tayside Healthcare Arts Trust).

Artist Kim Walker, invited the arts and health group to explore the relationship with Hospitalfield’s new Medicinal Garden, through looking at seasonal change, using language, images, print and through sound recording. Over eight weeks the group came together to talk, share, and look at the multiple histories, stories and sounds of the Medicinal Garden at Hospitalfield and to create an “audio walk”.

Participants worked with Kim “To develop a soundwalk composition that explores the medicinal garden at Hospitalfield, focusing on relating this to the concepts of traces and erasure within my own practice and other contemporary art practices. Discussion and activities will focus on developing an understanding of how soundwalks are developed; using deep listening practices to explore the environment; and using the medicinal garden as inspiration for the development of creative practice and related ideas."

I Don’t Need the Sound of the Radio

This sound work is the combined outcome of a series community workshops exploring sound art, sound walks, contemporary sonic art practice, concepts of Deep Listening and the composition of a soundwalk for Hospitalfield’s Physic Garden. I Don’t Need the Sound of the Radio was inspired by participants experiences within the garden and exploring the garden together. The idea of connecting to the ‘traces’ of the past through contemporary practice, and creating a new rendering informed by personal histories, old and new. For Kim, this commission sits at the intersection between an art commission and a community project, with participants shaping the artwork and influencing the final commission output.

About the artist

Kim Walker is a Scottish artist and educator based in Tayside. She works with sound, video, installation, and performance. She gained her MFA in Studio from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as the recipient of the Sound Departments Trustee’s Merit Scholarship. Kim gained her BA (Hons) Time Based Art from DJCAD and holds a PgDip in Library and Information Studies from the University of Strathclyde.

Kim has exhibited her artwork widely through artist-led spaces, larger galleries, festivals, and broadcasts and has held a variety of artist in residence positions. She has extensive experience delivering creative, informal learning projects for individuals, community groups and schools across Tayside. Recent projects include Wild Escapes Eco School; ARTIST ROOMS: Young People’s Projects; The People’s Story; Reconnect; and Latent taLent with THAT and the National Gallery.

Thank you to everyone who took part.

I Don’t Need the Sound of the Radio by Kim Walker

Dedicated to contemporary art and ideas, Hospitalfield is a place to work, study, learn, visit and enjoy.

Hospitalfield

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