Katie’s vision to create and remember together

Publish Date: Thursday March 28, 2024

Katie Fowlie, an art specialist and educator from the East Neuk, has been commissioned to deliver Remembering Together Fife, a co-creation project to sensitively mark the Covid-19 pandemic.

My role is to co-create something with communities across Fife to respond to a really difficult period in our lives.

Why can art make a difference? Community action and the arts are two of the most important conduits for our recovery from the pandemic, and we can combine these to great effect.

In so doing, we can reflect, connect, and make sense of all that has been gained, as well as all that has been lost. We’ll be better placed to look into the future with a shared empathy and optimism, and deeper sense of togetherness.

Promote wellbeing

I’ve named the Remembering Together Fife project PROCESS. The title acknowledges many things, such as our need to process the pandemic and our many losses; our ‘process-based’ workshops to promote wellbeing with communities across Fife; and process in terms of changing or preserving something.

The hope is that these workshops will encourage people out of isolation and begin to address the decline in self-confidence and mental health, which many people have endured because of the pandemic.

I’m lucky to live close to the sea, where I love to forage and beachcomb. My workshops are about encouraging co-creating and connecting. We use plant-based materials found in our landscapes and kitchens to make sustainable art materials, such as botanical inks and photographic emulsions.

Over the coming months I’ll be running free, accessible, relaxed workshops with community groups and key workers across Fife. Some events will be drop-in, and others (with limited numbers) can be booked via the Fife Coast and Countryside Trust website. I’m delighted to also be collaborating with Jayson Byles from East Neuk Seaweed for a few of these workshops – you can book your free place at PROCESS: The Art of Foraging.

Reflections

The engagement across Fife responding to this project and these workshops will culminate in the creation of a bespoke publication called PROCESS: a co-created visual diary of sorts, binding the collection of images, reflections, words, and fragments shared during the project.

It will be in the form of a single, long, continuous page – opening out like a concertina – gently held within a hand bound ‘box’ that will double as a camera obscura. This will provide a gentle nod to when our world was ‘upturned’ and an opportunity to reflect and remember.

I really look forward to creating and remembering together with you at these workshops,

Katie

Remembering Together is a Scottish Government funded project, delivered by Greenspace Scotland. Artists have been commissioned in each local authority area to co-create with communities and find ways of honouring the people we have lost and the ways we want to remember them.

Katie’s workshops are supported by Lateral Lab with additional funding from the Coalfields Regeneration Trust.

Book your free places at Katie’s workshops in Buckhaven and Leven.