REMEMBERING TOGETHER …
How It Feels To Be Apart
Over the last few months I have been one of the artists working on the Scotland-wide Remembering Together Covid 19 memorial commissions. I’ve begun from my own experience of lockdown - spent in Tobermory - but having arrived here with my young family only a few months before it began.
Working under the title ‘THIS IS ENOUGH’ the project celebrates the many small acts of kindness and support I saw unfold around me during that time, and builds on the sense that having time to look closely at our own surroundings and celebrate what we can make and grow ourselves 'at home' can be of value. I was extremely grateful to find myself somewhere with an overgrown garden during the lockdown, and I took a lot of pleasure from growing and gifting flowers - sometimes, I admit, as an escape from homeschooling!
On August 17th I will be co-hosting a day in Tobermory where I'm inviting people to come together and use the simple activity of making a hand-tied posy as a way to think together about this time. Using home-grown and wild flowers we'll be making up bunches to take away and gift to someone you'd like to remember or thank from that time - a helpful neighbour, delivery driver, co-op shopper, relative or friend.
'Unprecedented'.
We heard this phrase so often during the pandemic, and we all knew that, for once, what we were enduring really did fit this description. And yet, what the days often demanded of us during the crisis could seem modest. Making the most of a walk, missing friends and family, meeting one person outside, innovating meals with what we had in the cupboard and growing what we could with the seeds we had. This had to be 'enough', even when we had all had enough.
Here on Mull the first months of lockdown were blessed with uncharacteristic sunshine, an absence of traffic noise and a tourist season that didn't begin. Infrequent, almost empty ferries diminished even the usual hum of boat noise from the Sound. The continual news stream detailing the daily Covid19 mortality rates contrasted with domestic excursions and both could seem strange and sad, close by and far, far away. Many of us looked in detail again at our immediate surroundings, at the landscapes with which we believed we were familiar.
In the early evening on August 17th I'm delighted to be collaborating with Alasdair and Georgia Satchel for a special in person screening of ‘Islands in film’ - created during lockdown and featuring footage from 75 of us! In celebration of the fact we can all now come together in person to once again enjoy music, film and company, refreshments will be served following the film and everyone will be invited to continue to share reflections.
If you are a keen grower and would like to bring some flowers on the day I'd be delighted. Everyone will be most welcome to join to make up some flowers, watch the film or remember together.
If you'd like to know more about the project or the day please do get in touch - nina@somewhere.org.uk
‘Islands in film’ is a Struthach Films and Screen Argyll co-production for What We Do in the Winter in collaboration with Mull Museum, Tobermory.
THIS IS ENOUGH is a SOMEWHERE project for REFLECT, Remembering Together, the project is funded by the Scottish Government and delivered by Greenspace Scotland in partnership with Argyll and Bute Council and Culture, Heritage & Arts Assembly, Argyll & Isles (CHARTS).
Remembering Together has commissioned artists across Scotland to co-create memorials and space to come together with others to share and process what Covid has meant, and continues to mean, for communities across the country. As well as commemorating those who have lost their lives, and those who have experienced loss and change, it is also about recognising and celebrating the ways in which Scottish communities have come together during the most difficult times. Many of the projects are connected to green spaces and celebrate the close relationship with nature felt during the pandemic.