Conversing Building: TRIBUTARIES

Visit the Stove cafe to visit the Tributaries exhibition.

Tributaries brought together communities, artists and scientists along the River Nith to explore the river, its tributaries and the life they sustain.

Through activities including moth trapping, bat walks, water sampling, birdwatching and species recording, local people worked alongside scientists to observe and learn about the river and the ecological changes taking place around them. These encounters brought together different generations and forms of knowledge, from scientific observation to lived experience of the river.

This knowledge and experience became the starting point for creative workshops with textile artist Elizabeth Stephenson in which participants designed and made traditional trade union-style banners reflecting their communities’ particular relationships with the river and its tributaries.

The banners joined the Salty Coo procession in this year’s Nithraid in August.

The trade union banner is a symbol of solidarity, collective action and the demand for change. Here, we extend that idea beyond the human: could solidarity also be imagined between species, and between human and more-than-human communities? The banners celebrate the river and give visual expression to the interconnected lives that depend upon it.

Collective making created space for conversation, skill-sharing and intergenerational learning, offering a practical and creative way to respond to environmental change.

Tributaries is an outreach project for Nithraid, Dumfries’s annual river festival and boat race and we would like to continue the project. If you would like information about how to become part of the banner making project please contact: nithriverunion@gmail.com

Many thanks to everyone involved in the making and…….

Emily McLatchie (Artist – Thornhill workshops) Old School Thornhill Deborah Iden and the Moniaive Initiative Kirsty Johnson and Nith Life Malcolm Haddow at SWSEIC, Antoine Lemaire at Alouette Nature Tours, Leah Belford – Wallacehall Academy

Nithraid and the Tributaries Project are EcoArt productions