Lateral North to work with local groups to create Covid community memorial

CHARTS in partnership with Argyll and Bute Council and greenspace scotland have appointed Lateral North to work with individuals and communities to explore the impacts of Covid.

CHARTS are delighted to welcome design collective Lateral North to undertake this work who have firm family roots in the area, and a strong national reputation specialising in exhibition design, filmmaking, websites and community driven collaborative projects. They have worked extensively with communities, local authorities, governments and international institutions including the Scottish Government, Cairngorms National Park and La Biennale to date.

Graham Hogg, Director of Lateral North, said:, "The pandemic caused unimaginable pain for families throughout the world. However, it also brought social, economic and environmental challenges - such as Black Lives Matters, biodiversity loss, the climate emergency and other converging challenges to the fore. We are thrilled to be working on this project with CHARTS, and while the crux of the project will focus around what happened during the pandemic, we hope that Remembering Together can also look forward to how we address issues such as rising sea levels, temperature rise and cost of living - and how design and creativity can develop responses to these micro and macro challenges."

Offering a place to connect, reflect and create, Remembering Together is about creating together, being part of a process to commemorate those who have lost their lives, and celebrating the ways in which Scottish communities have come together during the most difficult times.

This Argyll and Bute wide project will have two phases - in this phase (phase one), Lateral North will work with local communities to explore and shape ideas for a creative output which reflects local people’s experiences of the pandemic. This collaboration with community groups and individuals will inform and make recommendations for the second phase of Remembering Together and a future arts commission to be advertised in November 2022. Phase two of the project aims to result in art work which will commemorate the impacts of the pandemic in mainland and island Argyll and Bute, to be completed in 2023.

Remembering Together Argyll and Bute will take place on the weeks of 12th, 19th, 26th of September and the 3rd of October and will be based on the four regions of the area - Oban, Lorn and the Isles; Mid Argyll, Kintyre and the Islands; Helensburgh and Lomond; and Bute and Cowal.

Over 12 locations will be visited and this will include Oban, Campbeltown, Mull, Helensburgh, Dunoon and more. More details on the locations, dates and times for all workshops will be confirmed shortly.

The workshops will take place in traditional settings, such as town halls, as well as other more unique and engaging settings, such as the Egg Shed. The workshops will be held for up to 20 people and focus around how the pandemic affected a local community, how that area would like to remember - and memorialise - the pandemic, and what a covid memorial looks like to them.

The aim is to develop a series of proposals which will be taken forward in the next phase of the project and this may result in a traditional memorial, however it may also be something else, ranging from a piece of music or film through to an exhibition or series of benches for remembrance.

The workshops will be focused around maps of the local area being visited as well as the wider Argyll and Bute region as a whole. Further to this, a virtual reality exhibition will allow people to contribute their ideas in unique ways and a toolkit is going to be made freely available to schools, community groups and organisations to ensure as may ideas are collected as possible. 

Remembering Together is being delivered by Lateral North using digital toolkits and workshops in person across mainland and islands. If you would like to be involved, please contact Graham Hogg, Director of Lateral North.