One of our community engagement tools is a large skin boat.
It was made one summer on the banks of loch ken as a community art installation. People dropped in (walking, driving, and boating) to take part in early medieval crafts and to help build the boat.
This was funded by Catstrand, and the loch was loch Ken, so the finished boat is called Catken.
She is in the workshop just now for some much needed repairs. Hopefully we will have her on the water again before the end of the summer! Before that she will help interpret the Archaeology of Carlingwark Loch this weekend in Castle Douglas as part of a land based display though.
If you come down to Deer park in Dumfries today you are in for a special treat. Along with the Cluaran boat we have characters fished out from the Nith as it flows through time (and the imagination!) This is part of the Nithraid organised by the Stove Network
As well as talking to them you can also imagine a character for yourself – and use it to tell a story.
If you can’t be by the river Nith in person, you can still join in. Use the idea of the river to travel through time. What stories would you tell if you were standing there? What stories would you want to listen to, or do you want people to research. What would help turn the places you live in into a home, rather than somwhere you are passing through?
Here are some signposts to places and groups who might be able to help you turn these ideas into research and reality!
