April 2022

April sees the welcome return to Cove Park of writers Michael Donkor and Julie Kennedy, visual artist Sara Bor, and writer, printmaker and animation producer Simon Bor. We are also pleased to host those taking part in our independently funded programme for the first time: papermaker Heather Mathew, writer Jane Rogoyska, visual artist Sara Sonas, and Brass Art, involving multidisciplinary collaborators Chara Lewis, Kristin Mojsiewicz and Anneke Pettican.

We continue our series of residencies offered in partnership with Playwrights' Studio Scotland and host in April writer and actor Kenny Boyle and playwright, Gaelic arts producer and teacher, Rona Dhòmhnallach/MacDonald. 

Magnetic North, the Edinburgh-based theatre company, brings its wonderful Space/Time Artists' Residency programme back to Cove Park this month, hosting photographic practitioner, teacher and writer Maria Falconer, actor, theatre maker and facilitator Morvern Macbeth, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter Jill O'Sullivan, composer and musician Ailie Robertson, and multidisciplinary artist Jill Skulina.

This edition of our Newsletter includes several major programme announcements. Scroll down for news of the national and international recipients of Cove Park's Funded Residencies for 2022/2023; details of the recipients of our new Youth Arts Fund Bursary Programme; the announcement of the Musician in Residence awarded as part of the Unexpected Gardens project; and some very good news of an award recently received for our growing Associates programme. Read on too for news of our forthcoming series of workshops and events, including Net-Zero Youth Voice, as part of Cove Park's Engagement programme.

Image: The Jacobs Building, Cove Park (photography by Alan Dimmick)

Funded Residencies 2022/2023 

Cove Park's annual programme of funded residencies support research, the development of existing and new projects, collaboration, interdisciplinary practice, and the production of new work and ideas. This year's residencies were awarded following an open call for applications. All national and international artists, cultural practitioners, and researchers, working individually and collaboratively in all art forms, in the creative industries, and across disciplines, were eligible to apply. Cove Park’s residencies also support individuals at every stage in their careers.

We can today announce the names of all those taking part in our Funded Residency Programme between Spring 2022 and Spring 2023. They are:

Polly Barton (translator, England)
Miranda Bellamy & Amanda Fauteux (visual artists, Canada & New Zealand)
Mele Broomes (choreographer, dancer, and creative director, Scotland)
Edd Carr (moving image artist, photographer and researcher, England)
CAAS Collective: visual artist and amateur astronomer Rohini Devasher (India), writer and design researcher Sue Fairburn (Canada), architect and design researcher Barbara Imhof (Austria), & spaceship designer and entrepreneur Susmita Mohanty (India)
Zain Dada & Dhelia Snoussi (multi-disciplinary practitioners, England)
Ufuoma Essi (filmmaker, moving images and sound artist, England)
Tim Fab-Eme (writer, Nigeria)
Nic Green (maker and performing artist, Scotland)
Languid Hands (curators and multidisciplinary practitioners, England)
Sekai Machache (visual artist and curator, Scotland)
Hatty Nestor (writer, England)
Nilam Sari (maker and visual artist, Indonesia)
Hope Strickland (filmmaker and moving image artist, England)
Amanda Verlaque (playwright and theatre maker, Northern Ireland)

Please click on the above names for information on the practices and current work of everyone taking part. More information on Cove Park's annual programme of funded residencies is available here.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank members of our Advisory Committee for their expert advice and help throughout the application shortlisting process: Sepake Angiama, Erika Balsom, Meehan Crist, Taru Elfving, Cédric Fauq, Jorge González, and Vincenzo Latronico. We are also grateful to our former residents and Cove Park Associates Florence Dwyer, Jeda Pearl Lewis, and Ciara Phillips, and to our Trustees Lauren Dyer Amazeen, Ana Botella Díez de Corral, and Sumit Paul-Choudhury, for taking part in the interview panels. Biographies of all our Advisors and Trustees can be found here. Please scroll down for information on Cove Park's Associates programme.

We are grateful to The Bridge Awards for their ongoing support of our Early Career Visual Arts Residency, awarded this year to Sekai Machache.

Images: above, Miranda Bellamy & Amanda Fauteux; A Wardian Case, 4-channel 4K video installation, 2021, RM Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand (photography, Miranda Bellamy); below, Sekai Machache, Deep Divine Sky 1,2 and 3. Digital print direct on aluminium. The Fleming Collection. (Photography credit: Antanas Budvytis).

Youth Arts Fund Bursary Programme:
Bursary Recipients Announced

In January 2022 Cove Park announced its Youth Arts Bursary Programme, made possible with an award from Creative Scotland's Youth Arts Fund. This makes possible an 11-month programme of residencies and bespoke mentoring to support Scotland-based practitioners, aged between 18-24, in the early stages of establishing their careers in the arts, screen, and creative industries.

We are pleased to announce the recipients of the four Cove Park Bursaries:

Design: Mathilde N'Doye (Glasgow)
Digital Practice: Antony Lucchessi (Glasgow)
Literature: Bonnie MacRae (Dundee)
Theatre: Dylan Bonnar (Greenock)

The Bursaries were awarded following an open call for applications and we would like to thank the programme advisors for their help: artist and cultural educator for Tarbert's talc., Nicole Heidtke; playwright, theatre maker, drag performer and Artist Development Coordinator for National Theatre of Scotland Nelly Kelly; Platform's Visual Arts Programmer Margaret McCormick; design curator, Co-Director of Panel and  Cove Park Associate Lucy McEachan; and CCA Glasgow's Projects and Digital Producer Alex Misick.

The Bursaries begin in April and we look forward to welcoming the recipients to Cove Park for their four-week residencies over the coming months. 

Images: above, Antony Lucchessi, Something in the Distance, 2022, digital display, looping animation, graphite, paper, wood, 500 x 500 x 70mm; below, Mathilde N'Doye, Whilst we Wait, ongoing project, (images courtesy of the artists).

News from the Unexpected Gardens:
Musician in Residence Announced 

We can also announce the appointment of Siôn Parkinson as the Unexpected Garden's Musician in Residence. This appointment was made following an open call and nomination process, and the brief involves the opportunity to create new work connected to the Unexpected Gardens, currently in development here on the Rosneath peninsula, as part of the nationwide Dandelion programme. We are grateful to former residents composer Sally Beamish, and musician, writer and creative producer Merlyn Driver, for their help with nominations for this project.

Based in Broughty Ferry, Dundee, Siôn is a sound artist, composer, writer, and performer. Recent works include a short puppet animation for the BBC, a perfume score for tuba virtuoso Jack Adler-McKean, and a piece commissioned by Red Note Ensemble exploring the music of smell hallucinations. Read more about Siôn's work here.

Cove Park's Unexpected Gardens are situated on distinct sites overlooking Loch Long and the Gareloch. Siôn will join artist Hannah Brackston on this project and the sites include a disused car park at Centre 81 Community Centre in Garelochhead, and the Sailing Club in Cove. Local community involvement is central to the design of the gardens to ensure they will continue to be accessible and valued spaces in the future. The growing and development of the gardens will focus on re-connecting with existing flora and fauna and how, in the future, they can be used in food, medicine, dyed textiles and art.

We are pleased to confirm that two of Cove Park's former residents have also been appointed as Musicians in Residence for other Unexpected Gardens projects: Ceylan Hay (aka 'bell lungs') for The Stove Network's Stranraer Garden, and Duncan MacLeod for Taigh Chearsabhagh's North Uist Garden.

Image: Siôn Parkinson, Stink Music for Voice, Theremin & Modular Synth
2020, Performance, Duration 45 mins., Costume by Matty Bovan (photography, Donald Milne, 2020)

Cove Park Associates 2022/23

Cove Park Associates is a membership programme open to all our former residents, and is the primary means through which we can continue to support and work with alumni. Although the programme is just in its first year, we were pleased to offer two new funded residencies dedicated to our Associates in 2022/2023 (to visual artist Edward Gwyn Jones and writer Kirsty Logan), and to have involved programme members in the appointment process for both the Funded and Youth Arts Fund Bursary programmes (roles which are remunerated at Scottish Artist Union recommended rates).

A further benefit of the Associates programme is the opportunity to take part in international residencies. We are currently inviting applications from former Cove Park literature programme residents for a one month residency at Varuna - The National Writers' House Australia, from 25 September to 22 October 2022. This residency is made possible with support from The Bridge Awards and further information and details of how to apply - by 25 April - are available here.

Finally, we can announce Cove Park has been awarded funding specifically to support the development of the Associates programme, so please watch this space for future announcements of events and new opportunities.

If you are a former resident and would like to join our Associates programme, please visit the Alumni Page on our website for more information, or complete and submit the Associates Membership Form.

Images: above, Rhona Jack, Cove Park Associate (photography, Alan Dimmick)

Architectural Association Visiting School 2022

Cove Park and the Architectural Association are calling upon architects, designers, and artists to generate spatial propositions for Cove Park's site in collaboration with the Architectural Association's Visiting School (AAVS). 

The Visiting School is a global network of courses and workshops pursued and shaped by students working intensively in small groups led by AA tutors. Central to the programme is the idea that experimental, new, and provocative forms of architecture are best learned by doing. The school promotes, tests and challenges global interests in architectural learning and exchange by embedding a diverse group of creative students and tutors in an array of unique rural, urban, and international contexts.

Cove Park is very excited to be the location for the 2022 Visiting School from 11 - 24 July. The School will engage with Cove Park's ambitions for the development and extension of our accommodation and facilities on site, integrating principles of low embodied carbon, co-living and responsibility towards the land. The School will invite participants to consider what these terms mean today as we plan for an uncertain future defined by climate breakdown. How can we integrate a radical ethos of environmental sustainability with flexible land management planning and ever-changing user’s needs and desires?  How can we best relate to the scale of the site, the challenging presence of the natural elements, and the existing buildings?

AAVS Cove Park will be a two-week experimental programme in which to explore these questions by interrogating, researching, and testing spatial propositions within the context of Cove Park and our 50-acre site. Participants will be free to undertake an individual or collaborative approach to their projects amongst a multi-disciplinary cohort. As a group AAVS 2022 will transform Cove Park into a dynamic forum, generating and exchanging ideas which will contribute towards the design brief of the centre’s future development.

Participants will be supported by a teaching team at the intersection of architecture and art through lectures, guided walks, workshops, and tutorials. This call is open to current architecture, design and art students, PhD candidates and young professionals, and creative practitioners globally. Scottish architecture students are eligible to apply for a fully funded scholarship.

For more information about the programme, please contact visitingschool@aaschool.ac.uk and register your interest now by visiting the Architectural Association's website. 

Image: AAVS 

Cove Park Engagement
Net-Zero Youth Voice

We are excited to share news of a wonderful series of workshops taking place this month. Working with teens in London’s Southbank University Academy who are regularly exposed to illegal levels of air pollution, and members of Hermitage Academy’s Eco Committee in Helensburgh, artist collective East London Cable are co-producing a new film that explores climate justice and the uneven impacts of 'net-zero' climate policies. 

Shot in the style of a TV-show in school classrooms and community art centres, Net-Zero Youth Voice reflects on some of the ideas in Soren Hansen and Jesper Jensen’s the little red schoolbook (published 1969; re-published 2014), which encourages children to question authority and take an active role in ‘improving things.’ 

Young people drive this project, developing the content of the TV show with East London Cable and filming aspects of it using a portable camera kit. Reflecting on Imperial College London’s climate policy proposals, they interview activists about the health burden of air pollution, and record parents’ opinions on policies such as the switch to electric vehicles. Looking to their futures, and their dependencies on adult decision-makers, young people investigate what solidarity around achieving climate targets between young and older people might look like.

Net-Zero Youth Voice is a new artist film by Louis Brown for East London Cable, made with assistance from artist Felix Melia, in residence at Cove Park during April 2022. More information on this project and the artist's biographies are available here.

Net-Zero Youth Voice is commissioned by Imperial College London, generously supported by The Andrew Wainwright Reform Trust and developed in partnership with Cove Park. In Scotland, workshops with the project participants will be held at The Mack Club, Helensburgh, and at Cove Park.

If you have questions concerning this event, please contact Cove Park Curator of Engagement Emma Henderson. 

Images: above and below, Stills taken from Net-Zero Youth Voice workshops at Southbank University Academy, South London, led by Louis Brown for East London Cable, February 2022.

Cove Park Engagement
'If Our Trees Could Talk', Storytelling Workshop

Our next Saturday Studios event at Cove Park takes place on Saturday 30 April. Join our Year Of Stories Storyteller Katrine Turner for this unique workshop: a morning session  aimed at children from primary 3-4 will run from 10.00am, and an afternoon session for those in primary 5-7 will run from 1.30pm.

Connecting to our Argyll Beacon programme, Katrine will encourage participants to think about the flora and fauna of our rainforests and to imagine the stories of all the characters who inhabit these unique places. The ideas, voices and imaginations of all those taking part will form an intrinsic part of Katrine's work in telling the story of our forests.

For more information, and to reserve your free place, please visit our Eventbrite page. If you have questions concerning this event, please contact Cove Park Curator of Engagement Emma Henderson. 

Image: Artist Juliana Capes at Taynish Woodlands, Argyll, as part of the Argyll Beacon Artists in Schools Programme.