North-east creative community worker and artist Victoria Fifield will explore what “home” means to locals in 2022 to mark the reopening of Fittie Community Hall.
Her exhibition – No Place Like Home – explores migration and diversity across Aberdeen and coincides with the re-opening of the newly renovated venue.
Victoria is one of four artists and creative producers working with the Fittie community and harbour area through Safe Harbour: Open Sea, which is part of a wider Scottish Government-funded initiative called Culture Collective.
This initiative was launched at the end of 2020 and aims to use arts and culture to address the impacts of Covid-19 and wider social, economic and environmental influences on communities around Scotland.
It brings creativity and culture into the heart of community life as well as much-needed work opportunities to the region’s cultural sector.
Creating work opportunities for local artists
Safe Harbour: Open Sea is working to make the Fittie Community Hall a cultural space, as well as a community venue and extending the project’s arts and heritage remit across the harbour area.
It also recognises Aberdeen as a harbour city and a place where people have for generations departed and arrived.
The Safe Harbour: Open Sea team hosted workshops on environmental sustainability, creative storytelling and building an oral archive of local memories, stories and hopes for the future.
And now, Victoria will present the findings of questionnaires, workshops and submissions to a postal art project on this topic. Also on show will be a selection of artworks by participants in an ongoing RGU research project on EU nationals living in the UK.
She said: “I hope people learn more about the experiences of others who have moved to Aberdeen from elsewhere and that this will create greater empathy and understanding of the difficulties people face as well as celebrating the good things about the city through the eyes of others.
“I also hope visitors will have a chance to reflect on the concept of ‘home’ in their own lives.”
Don’t miss Fittie Community Hall exhibition
Curated by Victoria, the exhibition is open on Sunday June 5 from noon to 5pm at the Fittie Community Hall on New Pier Road.
Conversation