Collective acts of reflection, remembrance, hope and healing with communities across Scotland

Scotland’s Covid Community Memorial Programme, named Remembering Together, is working with local partners to commission artists in all 32 local authority areas to co-create collective acts of reflection, remembrance, hope and healing with communities across Scotland. The programme is managed by greenspace scotland with funding support from Scottish Government.

“As we cautiously take steps towards a more normal way of life, it’s important to remember that the grief and suffering remains for those who have lost loved ones throughout the pandemic.

The Community Memorials programme will provide fitting and lasting local tributes to those who lost their lives to COVID-19 and other illnesses during the pandemic, and will support those who have experienced change, loss and isolation in other ways. I would greatly encourage artists and communities across Scotland to participate in the programme.

The programme will provide spaces that people can visit, and cherish; where people will be able to gather in person to mark the pandemic and to remember those we have lost, and pay tribute to the many ways we offered support and solidarity to one another during an extraordinary period.”

- First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, March 2021

Covid has touched everyone in Scotland, and across the world. Coming together now to co-create memorials gives us an opportunity to pause, to reflect and to consider all that has happened in our communities.

Remembering Together does not mark the end of the pandemic. Covid will be with us for some time to come and we cannot predict how we will be impacted in the future. Remembering Together instead seeks to provide much-needed acknowledgement and recognition of those we have lost and the challenges we continue to face.

In this spirit, as well as Remembering Together honouring those whose lives have been lost to and during the pandemic, it is also about reconnecting people and reminding each other that the pandemic has been experienced universally as well as individually. Some have experienced bereavement and loss or felt deeper impacts on their lives due to diversity dimensions such as age, care, disability, and ethnicity, as well as the pronounced challenges that place, faith, LGBT+ status and poverty bring.

Co-creating with Communities

With the support of the Remembering Together team at greenspace scotland, our programme partners and their commissioned artists/creative practitioners are working with people that have been bereaved or otherwise affected by the Covid pandemic to co-create a memorial project for their area. The project is being delivered in two phases; phase 1 is a period of co-creation with communities, for artists and creative practitioners to  work with their communities and to explore “what will our memorial be?”. Phase 2 is when those ideas will be realised. 

Remembering Together may not result in the kinds of memorials we might expect. Some communities will want a place they can go, some will want a structure they can visit and to see their loved ones named. Other communities may want to co-create music, movement, film, an online project, a series of events and gatherings or a travelling book. What people want and need may also change as we continue to live through and come to terms with Covid in Scotland. Through co-creation, Remembering Together aims to reflect the many memories and stories people want to tell through their memorial projects.

Most phase 1 co-creation work is now drawing to a close and the memorial plans for phase 2 of Remembering Together will soon get underway  To find out more about Remembering Together and about all the artists working in each area, follow the links below.

What is Remembering Together? - About Remembering Together — Remembering Together | Co-creating Covid Community Memorials

In Your Area - In Your Area — Remembering Together | Co-creating Covid Community Memorials

Contact:

Programme Managers

Carla Almeida: [email protected]

John Saich: [email protected]

Notes:

Scotland’s Covid Community Memorial was announced by the First Minster in March 2021, on the anniversary of Scotland’s first national lockdown

Now named Remembering Together, the programme is being delivered by greenspace scotland and is supported with £4.4 million provided by the Scottish Government

Remembering Together is managed in two phases. Phase 1 is a five-month period of co-creation in each local authority area between communities and the artists/creative practitioners selected following responses to an advertised brief. In phase 2, the co-created ideas in each area will be realised in whatever way communities feel is the most appropriate for them

Local reference groups in each area have been working with the greenspace scotland Remembering Together team to identify communities most impacted by Covid-19 and to assist with access

A National Advisory Group has been established to work with greenspace scotland in the delivery of Remembering Together which includes LGBT Health and Wellbeing, Cruse Bereavement Care Scotland, NHS Charities Together, Age Scotland, Diversity Scotland and others