Audio Fiction Dot C O Dot U K
A library of fiction podcasts, including audio dramas, books and RPG actual plays.

The Stove Network Podcast



Comedy Audio Drama


Synopsis:

The Stove Network is an arts and community organisation in the heart of Dumfries High Street. We’re a cafe, a meeting place and an arts & events venue with a diverse programme stretching across music and literature, visual and public art, film and theatre, to town planning, architecture and design.We use arts and creativity to encourage, to gather, learn and bring life back to our town centre. We see the arts not as something solely for an ‘arts audience’ but rather as a vital contribution to society on all fronts.At the heart of everything we do is a love for our town and wider region. As the only arts-led development trust in Scotland, we work alongside our local authority, community organisations, local businesses and charities to create a vision for the future of Dumfries High Street. We’re aiming to create a place where culture, community and enterprise work hand-in-hand to support a new vision of the High Street. Our podcast features exclusive content, interviews, news and more. Stay updated by hitting 'follow' or 'subscribe'. 


Format: Audio Drama

Genres: Comedy

Not tagged: [Framing device] [Continuity] [Voices] [Maturity] [Creator demographics] [Character demographics] [Country of origin] [Transcript] [Completion status] [Content warnings]

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Episodes:

Episode 1: Spotlight with Cameron Hunter | What We Do Now

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 14:00:00 +0000

In this debut episode, we chat with Cameron Hunter—audio producer, musician, and drummer for North Atlas. Cameron shares insights into his work mentoring young artists in Dumfries & Galloway and his journey in music and production.

What We Do Now (WWDN) is a creative placemaking network based in Dumfries & Galloway. We bring together artists and community organizations to co-create projects, shape local plans, share knowledge, and foster enterprise, driving positive change through collaboration.

Find out more here: https://whatwedonow.scot/


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Freshers Mixer Reflections with Creative Spaces ✨

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Back in September our Creative Spaces Team; Anna, Sonah & James hosted their first event at the Stove - The Freshers Mixer.

With live performances, goodie bags and a (slightly chaotic) quiz, listen to the team talking through the project and their experience of throwing a stowed-out party on Dumfries High Street 🕺


Creative Spaces is a Dumfries-based collective of young creatives, working with and advocating for our region’s young artists.

Situated in the heart of Dumfries, Creative Spaces collaborates with young creatives from across the region, providing young people with opportunities to engage in the arts. Whether it’s through events, workshops, mentorships, or our annual Associates Programme, we aim to enhance Dumfries and Galloway’s creative scene by offering free access to opportunities and paid commission. 

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Off The Margin – the Future of Grassroots Media | A Panel Discussion Produced by The Stove Network & WWDN Digital

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 10:00:00 +0100

As part of this programme, The Stove’s Artistic Director, Martin O’Neill, sat down for an insightful discussion with a panel of speakers whose expertise ranged from history to investigative journalism, Riso printing techniques, and working in the former news and print spaces of Dumfries’ high street.

While examining the current landscape in Scottish grassroots print and journalism, the panel tackled how communities, creatives, and journalists can reclaim their agency while navigating an era marked by an increasingly divided mass media and heightened public scrutiny regarding the accuracy and biases of printed media. This discussion revealed insights and sparked a hopeful community dialogue on the potential future of print, media, and journalism in Dumfries and Galloway.

The discussion directly followed a screening of the film-work Imprints in Time by artist John Wallace, documenting the master printmakers and enduring machinery still in use at Solway Print while uncovering the printing heritage of Dumfries town centre.

The panel comprised Judith Hewitt (Museums Curator East for the Dumfries and Galloway Council), Johnny Gailey (Out of the Blueprint Project Manager), Karen Goodwin (Investigative Journalist and Co-Editor of The Ferret), Pete Fortune (Doonhamer and Printmaker), and John Wallace (Artist & Filmmaker).

Each panellist brought unique and specialised knowledge to the discussion.

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The Radical Land: Colin Tennant & Saskia Coulson

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 09:00:00 +0100

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. 


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The Radical Land: Galson Estate & Virginia Hutchison

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 13:00:00 +0100

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.  

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The Radical Land: Abriachan Forest Trust & Richard Bracken

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 09:00:00 +0100

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. 


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Atlas Pandemica: Bibliographer Philip Palios

Tue, 29 Jun 2021 12:00:00 +0100

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.

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Atlas Pandemica: TS Beall

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 09:00:00 +0100

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. 

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Atlas Pandemica: Katie Anderson

Fri, 04 Jun 2021 09:00:00 +0100

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.'

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Atlas Pandemica: Peter Smith

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 09:00:00 +0100

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.'

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Atlas Pandemica: JoAnne McKay

Thu, 27 May 2021 10:00:00 +0100

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.'


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Atlas Pandemica: Karen Campbell

Tue, 25 May 2021 13:00:00 +0100

Project Curator, Matt Baker sits down with writer Karen Campbell to discuss her Atlas Pandemica project 'Here Is Our Story'.

'Karen is the Writer in Residence within D & G Council, using a mix of workshops and one-to-one discussions to write ‘Here Is Our Story’ – a collection of short stories and monologues, which will all be fictional, but founded on the real-life experiences of Council staff during the initial COVID response. In particular, she’ll be exploring the many small, often personal and spontaneous decisions that staff might have been making throughout the pandemic, and the ‘ripples’ those decisions have made, both for them, the way they work, and the communities they serve.

As a former Council officer herself, she’s hoping that, as well as documenting this moment in time, her residency will give Council staff the space and time to reflect creatively themselves on what they’ve been through, to acknowledge the different ways they’ve been working, and what that has meant. Are they proud? What might have helped them better – more support? Less barriers? What guided them – gut instinct? Kindness and care? Were they liberated or scared? Were the decisions they made more immediate and less bureaucratic – and if so, do we want to sustain that new, more autonomous, people-centred way of working into the future?’

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Atlas Pandemica: Robbie Coleman & Jo Hodges

Wed, 19 May 2021 14:00:00 +0100

Atlas Pandemica Curator Matt Baker speaks with artist duo Robbie Coleman and Jo Hodges about their project 'Distance: Proximity: Loss'.

The coronavirus pandemic is changing relationships and practices at the end of our lives affecting every aspect of the process of dying; how we support some ones passing, how we mark someone’s life, how we bury them and how we grieve. Distance: Proximity: Loss aims to explore how creative processes can be used in rethinking responses to the challenges presented by the Covid pandemic. Families who have lost a loved one as well as the institutions that support the processes of end of life; undertakers, healthcare workers and spiritual leaders, have all been forced to adapt to new safety rules and regulations. These new rules make an already difficult process even more intense and challenging. Our project will research what impact these new rules are having and creatively explore new practices and adaptations for marking someone’s passing and support the grieving process.

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Atlas Pandemica: Emma Jayne Park

Fri, 14 May 2021 12:00:00 +0100

In this episode, Atlas Pandemica Curator Matt Baker speaks with artist and movement practitioner Emma Jayne Park about her project 'The Geography of Power'.

How do we organise information? Who gets to organise information? How does this impact decision-making? Who holds the knowledge? Do they hold the power? How do they share it? How do they relinquish it? Do they want to? Is reactive action leadership or recklessness? Do the values we aspire to align with our perception of leadership? Can leaders be vulnerable? Could you be trusted to lead someone who is vulnerable? Would you want to? Where would you lead them? Why should they trust you?

Atlas Pandemica: The Geography of Power invites locals to explain how Dumfries and Galloway works at this time of pandemic through a series of invitations and provocations: including postcards, letters, text messages, phone calls and the offer to walk with Emma as she tries to cross the region on foot – looking for locals to guide her. There is no agenda other than to learn from those who call the region home. Conversations will be collected, collated and reframed to form a series of sketches, maps and instructions that reflect the information that has been shared. These will be offered back to the residents of the region so that they can then decide if there is anything they would like to celebrate or question.

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Atlas Pandemica: Mark Zygadlo

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 12:00:00 +0100

In this episode, project curator Matt Baker speaks with artist Mark Zygadlo about his project 'Landwatership'. 

Landwatership proposes that the vital and fundamental elements of our environment, land and water, are active members of our localised communities. It presupposes that no part of our environment is unaffected by human presence and no part of us is unaffected by our environment. These factors have been foregrounded during the Covid-19 pandemic.

By focusing on the Glenmidge Burn, and the community of its catchment, walking the waterways and the catchment boundary guided by members of the community and representatives of riverine interest, Mark will interrogate the theory of Landwatership.

Information gathered will underpin a conceptual re-mapping of where we live and ask: is Landwatership a meaningful way for communities to co-identify themselves with place? Is it a matrix of change, can it help us address the tensions between global economics and local viability? Does it provide a way of addressing the approaching threat of climate change foreshadowed by the Coronavirus Pandemic?

Mark Zygadlo is an artist based in Dumfries & Galloway . Cabinetmaking, carving, boatbuilding, timber framing and writing supported a growing family and, since 2009, he has channelled these disciplines into the making of public artworks.

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Atlas Pandemica: Jenna Macrory

Tue, 13 Apr 2021 21:00:00 +0100

A discussion with artist and researcher Jenna Macrory on her Atlas Pandemica project 'LGBTQ Voices'.

'My project is called LGBTQ Voices. It aims to engage the queer community by presenting the idea that hate speech can be viewed as the start of a dysfunctional conversation.

Members of the LGBTQ community are often engaged in unsolicited conversation in the form of abuse on the street, however, as part of this community you quickly learn to silence yourself for your own safety, but this doesn’t mean you have nothing to say.

LGBTQ Voices is a chance for the community to speak back and bring a wider public into a conversation about the experience of people who identify as LGBTQ in Dumfries and Galloway, particularly within the context of Lockdown and the Black Lives matter protests.'

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Atlas Pandemica: Annie Wild

Tue, 06 Apr 2021 12:00:00 +0100

Atlas Pandemica: Maps to a Kinder World’ is a compendium of 10 projects led by creative people, each investigating a different theme highlighted by life during the COVID pandemic. Projects worked directly with people in Dumfries and Galloway, focussing on the impacts and the learning from the community’s experience of the evolving pandemic. Atlas Pandemica was conceived and is managed by community-led arts organisation The Stove Network, it explores local responses to the pandemic and how these might shape new approaches to our shared future. The project is supported by Scottish Government’s ‘Supporting Communities Fund’

In this podcast series, one of the curators of Atlas Pandemica, Matt Baker, will be talking to each of the artists leading one of the Atlas explorations. The first in series is Annie Wild - Annie is a freelance Social Researcher. In the past she's worked in academia and in a large research agency but these days works on research projects with community and arts organisations from across Dumfries and Galloway. She's also involved in local environmental activism.

Annie’s Project for Atlas Pandemica is called 'For Love, Not Money?’ The project explores the concept of care and the experiences of giving care during COVID-19. Annie worked with a group of unpaid carers interviewing them over a period of time through the pandemic she is interested in the ways in which all people practice some form unpaid care: being parents or grandparents; looking out for neighbours or older relatives; or offering emotional support to friends and co-workers. At an absolute minimum we all keep ourselves fed, dressed and clean. I will be working with participants to visually map out networks of care and the ways these have been affected by COVID-19.

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Lowland: Epilogue

Fri, 11 Dec 2020 18:00:00 +0000

Lowland: Epilogue

Barnside is sinking and its residents are ready to revolt. As the storm gathers and darkens, the local council have a plan to share. Only, not everything is as it seems and sooner or later, something’s going to give…

An audio play in two acts, inspired by over 500 postcards reflecting on life in Dumfries written by Doonhamers. Lowland: The Play features a community cast, devised through collaboration with local writers’ groups, communities and members of the local council, Lowland is the tale of a consultation gone wrong.

As Angela, a council officer, prepares for a consultation, one year in the making, her boss throws a curve ball, eradicating all her best intentions, leaving her and her assistants in disarray and woefully unprepared. As a storm rages on outside, a community prepares a coup d’état…

Lowland is a dark comedy, offering a satirical look at the nature of community, power, local democracy and belonging.

Contains strong language and adult themes which may not be appropriate for younger listeners. 

Lowland is supported by DGU alongside Dumfries & Galloway Council. 

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Lowland: Chapter Two

Fri, 11 Dec 2020 17:00:00 +0000

Lowland: Chapter Two

Barnside is sinking and its residents are ready to revolt. As the storm gathers and darkens, the local council have a plan to share. Only, not everything is as it seems and sooner or later, something’s going to give…

An audio play in two acts, inspired by over 500 postcards reflecting on life in Dumfries written by Doonhamers. Lowland: The Play features a community cast, devised through collaboration with local writers’ groups, communities and members of the local council, Lowland is the tale of a consultation gone wrong.

As Angela, a council officer, prepares for a consultation, one year in the making, her boss throws a curve ball, eradicating all her best intentions, leaving her and her assistants in disarray and woefully unprepared. As a storm rages on outside, a community prepares a coup d’état…

Lowland is a dark comedy, offering a satirical look at the nature of community, power, local democracy and belonging.

Contains strong language and adult themes which may not be appropriate to younger listeners. 

Lowland is supported by DGU alongside Dumfries & Galloway Council. 

Direct MP3 link


Lowland: Chapter One

Thu, 10 Dec 2020 17:00:00 +0000

Lowland: Chapter One

Barnside is sinking and its residents are ready to revolt. As the storm gathers and darkens, the local council have a plan to share. Only, not everything is as it seems and sooner or later, something’s going to give…

An audio play in two acts, inspired by over 500 postcards reflecting on life in Dumfries written by Doonhamers. Lowland: The Play features a community cast, devised through collaboration with local writers’ groups, communities and members of the local council, Lowland is the tale of a consultation gone wrong.

As Angela, a council officer, prepares for a consultation, one year in the making, her boss throws a curve ball, eradicating all her best intentions, leaving her and her assistants in disarray and woefully unprepared. As a storm rages on outside, a community prepares a coup d’état…

Lowland is a dark comedy, offering a satirical look at the nature of community, power, local democracy and belonging.

Contains strong language and adult themes which may not be appropriate for younger listeners. 

Lowland is supported by DGU alongside Dumfries & Galloway Council. 

Direct MP3 link


Introduction to The Stove Network Podcast

Fri, 27 Nov 2020 12:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the Stove Network Podcast!

A space for ideas, conversations and updates from the heart of the Dumfries High Street. 

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