Header image, featuring Fallin Bing, is courtesy of Lindsay Forsyth - Forsyth Photos.

The focus of Scene Stirling’s community work is to support creative communities that operate outside of the city centre and might face several barriers to further development, fostering collaboration, widening access and engaging artists across the Stirling area in a practical and sustainable way. Bannockburn and the Eastern Stirling villages - including Plean, Cowie, Fallin, Throsk - were the first areas of focus, to promote opportunities and provide support to the local arts scene.

For our first stage of the Vantage Points programme, we ran a series of pilot projects, funded by Macrobert Arts Centre, in May 2021. These allowed us to test out ideas and establish initial connections with the local community, working towards developing and shaping a larger scale art trail and event during the summer of the same year.

The second phase of the project was built on the experience gathered through the pilot projects, and saw a group of 6 local artists working with the community in the Eastern Villages during the summer, towards a celebratory event on Sunday 22nd August 2021 at Bannockburn House.

We had a woodland exhibition and treasure trail, creative activities including stone paiting and lantern making, while visitors were also able to discover the history of Bannockburn House and find out more about the Landscape Legacies of Coal project.

We went back to Bannockburn House in June 2022, when Parsifal James Hurst and the Shakespeare Kids theatre group performed the dance piece ‘History in Movement’. The piece was created collaboratively with the kids during a number of sessions in 2022, starting from the movements developed during the pilot projects in 2021 and letting the young dancers interpret and experiment to reach a co-created choreography that tells the story of the Battle of Bannockburn. The result is a piece for 40 young dancers, who was performed live in the gardens of Bannockburn House.

During the ‘Exploring Bannockburn’ event at Bannockburn House in June 2022, we had even more Vantage Points representation with Carolyn Fraser leading participatory workshops with the public attending the day. Together they created a series of banners utilising methods like painting and collage.

Background to the Project

We launched the Vantage Points - Bannockburn and East Stirling Creative Network project in December 2020 and created a steering group composed of local artists/creatives, and cultural organisations operating in the areas, primarily Bannockburn House, Macrobert Arts Centre, and Stirling University. We have introduced a co-produced approach to support the local community with identified arts and creativity aspirations. The new cultural network we are building is led by the artists and local community groups - working together to decide how best to utilise this resource in partnership with the Scene Stirling cultural partners.

The activities in the programme were developed by local artists and creatives, in response to one or more of the themes that were identified as a group, and they interpreted them creatively to seek input from the wider community and explore reactions and expectations.

The projects were coordinated by Scene Stirling, with funding from Macrobert Arts Centre for the pilot phase. We worked in collaboration with Dr Catherine Mills from Stirling University, to connect the background research and outcomes of our activities with the Landscape Legacies of Coal project. Catherine Mills, together with post and undergraduate students from the University are collaborating with local community groups and individuals, to produce an expanding series of curated heritage walks that narrate the story of Scottish coal mining through the medium of, and active engagement with, the disappearing landscape legacies, utilising a mix of industrial archaeology, historic maps plans and images and oral testimonies. The walks - including a Polmaise route and an East Stirlingshire Villages route - are available to download for free on mobile phone app. You can download the app for free on Android or Apple devices, or visit your mobile store and search for 'Landscape Legacies of Coal'.