Vessel: A Shared Seat For Fife

In November 2025 furniture designer and artist Simon Whatley and new maker Mike Delaitre started working together to design and build a new two-person seat for communities across Fife. The whole project had started 18 months earlier when, inspired by our 2023 exhibition Crafted Selves, we started talking with the Fife African and Caribbean Network (FACN) about how to collaborate on a project together.

We wanted the project to be a co-production, so our conversation started with what the Network would like to see created and what expertise we could bring to help make that happen. The seat which was finally produced has been given the title Vessel and it will soon make its journey around Fife communities, eventually coming to rest in the collections of Fife Cultural Trust for all to enjoy. 

This page tells the story of that collaboration and begins the story of Vessel which will be further captured in an online exhibition and in our touring Craft Pods from 2026 to 2027. The exhibition will be launched in an online conversation with Mike and Simon for Black History Month on October 7 2026.

Craft Pods – Coming Soon

Book the Exhibition Launch

Our exhibition Crafted Selves, curated by Cat Dunn and presented at St Andrews Museum and Kirkcaldy Galleries in 2023, was the starting point for this project. Crafted Selves explored the relationship between craft and identity by asking how an experience of dual identity is being reflected in work being made by Scottish craft artists today.  

Talking with members of Fife African and Caribbean Network during the exhibition raised some important questions about black experience and representation within craft, as well as the specific experience of being a black Fifer. Less than 0.5 percent of people in Fife identify as African, Caribbean or Black (2022 census). The purpose of FACN is to support, connect and advocate for people of African and Caribbean heritage living in Fife.

The Network was keen to produce a project that enabled a connection between communities and became a safe space for conversation between strangers. They wanted to commission a bench where questions like ‘where are you from?’, which can often be loaded with microaggressions or underlying malice, could be asked and answered safely in a spirit of equal and respectful curiosity. 

Most importantly FACN wanted to ensure that the person commissioned to design and produce the bench was a person who understood the black experience, ideally someone from Fife. It proved incredibly difficult to find an individual with art, design and craft skills in furniture-making who also had the lived experience necessary to contribute to the project. It was at this point that we met Simon Whatley and who was a keen and supportive ally in the desire of the network to deliver the project and to expand the diversity of furniture design artists and makers in Scotland. With support from the William Grant Foundation, we were able to expand the project to become a professional development opportunity. We created a partnership where Simon could collaborate directly and in a mentoring capacity with a creative person with a lived experience of being black and living in Fife. 

Mike Delatire is a highly talented musician and videographer who also had an interest in carpentry and furniture making and working with salvaged and found materials. Mike was selected after we advertised the exhibition widely through our networks, FACN and advocacy groups for black artists such as We Are Here Scotland. Through this project we were able to bring Mike and Simon together to start to have conversations, learn from each other, and work in partnership on the bench design. 

The conversations they began together in November 2025 have led to the creation of Vessel, first launched in Dunfermline in June 2026 at a Curious Conversations event produced by the Fife African and Caribbean Network. To learn more about the creative process and design ideas behind Vessel visit our online exhibition, launching in October 2026.

The Vessel exhibition will launch with an online conversation between Mike Delaitre and Simon Whatley, with Nony Mordi from Fife African and Caribbean Network. To find out more and to attend the online conversation and launch please click below.  

Both collaborative partnerships – between Fife Contemporary and FACN, and between Mike and Simon – are still ongoing.