2022 – 2024
Community Covid Memorial for Dumfries and Galloway
Co-lead Artist
Dumfries and Galloway

A collaborative project co-led with socially engaged artist t s Beall, commissioned for the Dumfries and Galloway area as part of the national project, Remembering Together.

Working over two phases, Remembering Together Dumfries and Galloway began as a community project focused on co-creating a covid memorial for the region. In 2022, the commissioned artists spoke to over 800 people through a series of public events and focused workshops to explore ideas for and to determine the shape of a memorial to the impacts of the pandemic on communities here.

The second phase of the project took place across 2023 and 2024, and saw the commissioned artists working alongside communities, individuals and site partners to create The Dispersed Forest, a community covid memorial over five sites in Dumfries and Galloway, including planting of native species trees, alongside sculptural markers and the creation of an online archive sharing stories of loss and resilience gathered over the course of the project.

The Remembering Together Dumfries and Galloway project was officially launched in June 2024 with a series of community gathering events at each of the five Dispersed Memorial Forest sites. The Dispersed Memorial Forest can be found in

• Dumfries, across the Crichton and NHS Mountainhall
• Moffat Community Nature Reserve
• NTS Threave near Castle Douglas
• Galloway Community Hospital in Stranraer
• Bell Crescent Park in Sanquhar

For more information about our project, visit the project’s website here.

Remembering Together Scotland was delivered by greenspace scotland with funding from Scottish Government, and in Dumfries and Galloway was supported by Dumfries and Galloway Council and DG Unlimited.

Image credits: Gregor Anderson, Colin Tennant and Kirstin McEwan. Kirstin also made a series of short film pieces about the project, see below.