Oxfam Dumfries’s new writer in residence Katy Ewing has started the collaborative writing initiative and is working towards producing a ‘deep map’ of the town. Explaining more, she said: “I’m going to do what I can to try to build up a portrait of who Dumfries is and has been. I hope that this can be ongoing and include the voices and perspectives of as many folk as possible.
“This is an experiment. An attempt to make a ‘deep map’ of Dumfries – an interdisciplinary, multi-layered, multimedia portrait of the town. “The eventual product will depend on how much and what kind of response I get from others.”
Appealing for more participants, she added: “I will work on the deep map using as many other perspectives as I can and the more other voices I’m able to include, the richer the map could be.
“Are you someone who has known Dumfries your whole life? Or someone who moved here recently? Do you, like me, live outside Dumfries, but know it as the main town? Maybe you’ve only ever visited but have some particular important memory associated with it. Or do you have some expert knowledge – perhaps historical, archaeological, botanical, zoological, even mythological? Each will have quite a different perspective of the same particular places. If we could gather many of these, what could we build?”
Katy, pictured above, is a former student of Glasgow University’s Crichton campus and graduated last year with an MLitt in environment, culture and communication. She added: “Dumfries is in the midst of finding out who it wants to be, what it can be. “
Even just to me, Dumfries is not a single place. Add in the memories and experiences of all the others connected to Dumfries and what a rich and complex picture you’d have.”
To find out more go online to https://deepmappingdumfries.wordpress.com/ or by searching online for Deep Mapping Dumfries. Submissions can be dropped off at the Oxfam base.
