Tag: Crawford Arts Centre

On our 20th Anniversary

On 17 March 2006, exactly 20 years to the day from the date I sit down to write this blog, the organisation behind the Crawford Art Centre in St Andrews formally changed its name to Fife Contemporary Art and Craft (St Andrews) Ltd. Fife Contemporary, as the organisation became known, also changed its articles of association, its programme, and its methodology. Rather than operating a gallery and arts centre in St Andrews, Fife Contemporary began working across Fife, connecting the work of artists directly with communities. 

What didn’t change was Fife Contemporary’s ethos. At its heart has always been the need to support the work of visual and craft artists together, and to value quality work and artist and makers and their practices as a crucial part of the cultural life of Fife and of Scotland. This continues today in our passion for exhibition‑making and in the importance we place on bringing together artists and audiences through these exhibitions. Through this programme we can stretch ideas, expand experiences, and connect people together in ways that enrich lives. 

Working outwith the ties of a gallery space was daunting at first. However, it has provided Fife Contemporary with a profound opportunity to work directly with communities, including the artists based here in Fife, and to connect audiences and artists in ever more direct and expansive ways through extended projects and co‑commissioning. 

Twenty years is a comparatively short time in the life of some organisations; I am very aware, as I write this, that the RSA celebrates a full 200 years of existence this same year! However, for a small organisation like Fife Contemporary, this feels like an important moment to celebrate. Fife Contemporary has continually proven that it can punch above its weight—serving as both a valuable local resource and an important contributor to the Scotland’s funded organisations, shaping national and international conversations in our field. 

Dear Earth

But enough of blowing our own trumpet, I know it feels very uncouth and a bit out of character. But I wanted to share with those of you who follow us closely what we are doing and our plans for our 20th anniversary year. It has been my privilege to helm this fantastic organisation for the last four of these twenty years, and this mini‑milestone has provided a chance to reflect on where we have been, as well as to look forward to where we might be going. 

It was this idea of looking both back and forward that the whole team at Fife Contemporary first considered when we came together to design our anniversary‑year exhibition and the themes we wanted to explore. Looking back at our programme and considering the priorities and concerns of the present day, we found common ground in our shared interest in the environment, and in the climate emergency, an interest we also share with our past colleagues and collaborators. Fife Contemporary’s programme has often explored themes around climate, sustainability, carbon impact, and the circular economy. Exhibitions and projects have included Kingdom of If, ReSolve: A Creative Approach to the Circular Economy, a series of artists’ symposia which led to our Artists Environmental Resource and Sharespace, and collaborations with CAN and other sustainability partners. 

We felt it important to look back and reconsider some of these programmes this year, but also through our anniversary exhibition Dear Earth, which has just opened in Kirkcaldy, to consider where we now stand in relation to the climate emergency. 

As we created the exhibition and invited artists to consider multiple aspects of emergency and crisis in response to our call for proposals, we realised that a substantial shift has occurred in our collective relationship to climate change and global crises: the emergence of widespread climate anxiety or future fear. This was something not addressed in our earlier climate‑themed projects. 

Some of the artists featured in Dear Earth tackle this fear directly—particularly Jenny Pope’s ongoing installation tools for the optimistically challenged. Other works take a more enigmatic approach. Naomi McIntosh, Helen O’Brien, Will Carey, and Susie Johnston each, in their own way, point towards the precariousness of our current moment in time. 

As we developed the exhibition, we realised we wanted to create a space specifically for exploring these feelings—and so the Climate Care Corner came into being. Katie Fowlie’s Mosslings project was a perfect fit for this space, inviting visitors to make their own comforters from foraged and dried organic materials. Seeing visitors already interacting with this piece as they created their own mossling offerings was a highlight for me of our opening weekend. 

Satellite Programme

Dear Earth will run in Kirkcaldy until 13 September, and then in St Andrews from 30 September to 6 March 2027, so there is plenty of opportunity to engage with the works in the show. Alongside the exhibition, we are presenting a satellite programme of workshops, commissions, and events throughout the year to explore the themes involved—to reach back into our past programme and connect it to the present so ultimately, we can look forward with positivity. 

We have already begun this through our opening programme that has just concluded on Saturday 21 March. Artists Mella Shaw and Stefanie Ying Lin Cheong joined me to reflect on their past projects with Fife Contemporary, sparking a fascinating conversation about the impact artists can have on our wider societal relationship to the environment. I’m still reflecting on this discussion as I write, and I’m pleased that we were able to record it so that it can eventually be featured in our online exhibition for Dear Earth. 

Also during the opening weekend, photographer Zoe Hamill shared her expertise in creating photographic prints using plant‑based developers. It was a brilliant workshop and one we plan to repeat later in this anniversary year. 

There will also be new commissions this year with other past collaborators. Alan Grieve and Eddie Summerton’s A Cairngorm Love Affair premiered in St Andrews for StAnza 2026 and will be travelling and evolving into a new form for Kirkcaldy this summer. Jonathan Baxter, who curated Kingdom of If back in 2012, will be creating a new reflection on past and present responses to the climate crisis for our St Andrews iteration of Dear Earth in September, where additional events and workshops will continue to take us into the autumn. 

Next up in this busy satellite programme will be a Mosslings Workshop, Wild Worries, with Katie Fowlie. If you’ve enjoyed seeing the mosslings in the Climate Care Corner, be sure to sign up soon. We are also working with the Dundee-based project Sharing Not Hoarding to bring Dear Earth outside Fife for the summer… more to be announced soon! 

I am hopeful that this will be an exciting and energising year and that you will continue to follow what we are doing through our newsletters and social media. By transforming climate anxiety and future fear into positive collaboration with our artistic community, I feel Fife Contemporary can look forward to another 20 impactful years. 

Time to Reflect, Diana Sykes

After 34 years working for the Crawford Arts Centre/ Fife Contemporary, it’s time to look back and look forward. Staying with one organisation for most of one’s career is very unusual within the arts but the experience has been one of fairly constant evolution and change rather than stasis.  Less unusually, life and work have been intertwined.

Starting and Sustaining

My undergraduate research led to my role as the guinea pig student curator at the recently created university art centre in St Andrews which I subsequently returned to as Director. The centre had then just become independent of the university which equated in many respects with being poorer and more insecure. As it had emerged out of a battle over the value and place of culture however, the team started with a fierce determination to maintain and develop the quality programming. A certain stubbornness and conviction have then supported the organisation through further challenges. Although vulnerable through its small scale, the accompanying flexibility and nimbleness allowed it to survive beyond expectation. Continual hard work and an ability to change have secured essential public funding – most significantly when the Scottish Arts Council and Fife Council yet again showed confidence in major organisational change to pioneer delivering a programme free of a venue. Developing direct and special relationships with artists across Fife as well as the public has been a welcome result.

Artists and makers

While my historically-based art and museum training focused on objects, my career has been more about working with the artists and makers who have created the exhibits. An altogether more complex, sometimes demanding but enriching experience. I’ve always been conscious that my work exists because of the artist’s – it’s their reputation and ideas being exposed. Balancing the artist’s ambition to present their work in the best possible way, with the limitations of our and our partners’ resources, can create tensions. I apologise to artists for any tetchiness they experienced … Balancing the occasional stress, my career highlights have come from experiencing the work and insights of exceptional artists and makers from the local to the international.  

Curation

Curation is a term which has grown in meaning and stature within (and beyond) cultural fields. When I started out, it was restricted to describing the care of museum objects; but it then superseded ‘research and selection’ to encompass the tasks involved in exhibition-making, and it now feels like it extends that definition in more subtle, indefinable ways. I’m wary of the curator vying with the artist for acclaim, but a fan of guest curators (especially artist curators) bringing fresh ways of experiencing work and associated ideas. Inviting collaborators to bring their expertise and viewpoints has been essential to broadening and keeping the programme relevant.

Partnerships

Partnership with other organisations has also added value. Establishing STEC (Scottish Touring Exhibition Consortium) with colleagues in public galleries outwith the Central Belt resulted in a wide range of exhibitions and a nationwide network of friendships. Further networks and partnerships were fostered by the privilege of taking part in curatorial trips organised by the Scottish Arts Council / Creative Scotland. I’ve also particularly enjoyed creating projects with colleagues in Welsh organisations.

Dialogue between craft and visual art

From its university inception the organisation has promoted craft as well as visual art.  The questioning of hierarchy and exploration of the dialogue between media has been core to the programme. My affinity to craft probably goes back to my grandmother’s pride at coming from the Aubusson area with its tapestry heritage as well as the colourful Breton pottery we used in her home. This instinctive pleasure has been reinforced by meeting makers and learning about process and concepts.

The value of encouraging an interest in art and craft

Building on the kind of support I benefitted from, we’ve tried to encourage others to explore and gain experience, through school pupil placements and a Summer School, to student and early career paid internships. A curatorial traineeship focused on cultural diversity complemented the regular guest curator opportunities. Giving artists tangible support to freely develop their creative practice through the grants, bursaries and mentorships of the national VACMA (Visual Art and Craft Maker Awards) scheme has been a struggle but one I doggedly tried to maintain.

Exhibitions have been at the core of the public programme and its recognition, but providing opportunities to meet artists and explore everyone’s creativity through residencies and engagement activities have been as important. After roaming with (and not altogether successfully driving) a mobile gallery around Scotland, I was convinced that providing access to the broadest possible public should be a basic aim, while recognising that connecting them with the many benefits of art required a range of strategies. Meeting groups of people through targeted projects has enlarged my knowledge and understanding of the barriers they face in life as much as it has hopefully provided them with a positive creative experience.

Arts organisations often have a fragile existence. Episodes of major adversity have tested us but memories of survival highlight the positive. A threatened removal of public funding led to a support campaign (I still have the t-shirt although it sadly no longer fits…) including a Barbie doll window display. When a homophobic group tried to close down a student production in the studio theatre, firm resistance and support again came from the organisation’s voluntary board members and a diligent police inspector who provided the expertise and staff to keep the show open.

In reflecting on my work experience I have resisted an initial impulse to list favourite exhibitions or artists met. There are too many and I have appreciated the variety of insight, wonder and challenge they have provided as well as personal generosity and kindness. Similarly, I have avoided naming specific partners and board members in case I leave someone out (and my memory for names is sadly increasingly fallible…). I would however like to record my gratitude for the crucial support provided by Chairs of the board at key points over the years and my fond admiration for an elderly cleaner who contributed a cheering combination of humour and broadmindedness.

The only people I must name are my former colleagues Susan, Arlene and Stefanie. If this blog equates the organisation with me, it is not because I have been essential to it but because my work has always been bound with, and made possible by, a close long-standing team. They will help Kate as she familiarises herself with the organisation and I am confident that it will thrive and develop under her stewardship. I look forward to experiencing the future programme and pledge to support but not interfere!

Once I realise that I am not on some strange holiday, I plan to remain part of, and contribute to, the visual art and craft community. My board membership of a couple of artist-run Fife art organisations and an archive to sort will provide useful starting points.

Top image: opening of Diana’s JD Fergusson exhibition at the Crawford Arts Centre, St Andrews, 1982. L to R: unknown person, Robin Spencer (Art History), Louise Annand (Chair, JD Fergusson Foundation), Diana Sykes, Prof Martin Kemp (Art History)

Celebrating 30 years at Fife Contemporary

If you have ever been in touch with us here at Fife Contemporary, it’s likely that you will have talked to either Diana Sykes or Susan Davis. Unbelievably, they have both been with us for 30 years!

They both started when the organisation was the Crawford Arts Centre, and continued when it became Fife Contemporary Art & Craft, and are here with Fife Contemporary.

Susan began work with the Crawford Arts Centre as the Touring Exhibitions Officer in April 1987, which means that she has been with us for a staggering 31 years.

Diana came to the organisation a year later to take up the position of Director on 31st August 1988, so 30 years to the day have passed since she joined us.

I think you will agree that they have hardly changed a bit!

Have You Seen Our New Leaflet?

We haven’t had a leaflet about ourselves printed very often.  In the past as the Crawford Arts Centre, it made good sense to have programme brochures printed up every year and distributed hither and thither. But as we run an entirely different ship nowadays, this one was required mainly due to our brand identity update last year.

This new leaflet will hopefully give any reader a clear view of what we do, whether you’re a practising artist or just someone who’s interested in contemporary visual art and craft in some way. It’s not a programme brochure.  You won’t find a list of our proposed activities for the next 6 months.  But you will find a page of contact information telling you where to find out what we’re up to – primarily via our Virtual Venue (the website), then social media links, and of course more traditional methods like postal address and phone number.

If you take a look at the leaflet, you’ll also find a small map of Fife showing just where we have been active over the last 12 years.

Interestingly (or it was for me when creating it!), it showed that we’d visited more than 40 towns and villages around Fife in that time bringing some form of contemporary visual art and craft experience to them – exhibitions, artist residencies, workshops of many types, school visits, work with community groups – and more. Many we’ve visited multiple times.

You can find a copy of our leaflet at Fife libraries, Fife Cultural Trust museums & galleries, and many other such venues around Scotland.  If you’d like us to send you a copy, just get in touch! Or, you can download a pdf version right here (2.7MB).