In 2021 Bothy Project, Fogo Island Arts and Fogo Island Workshops collaborated to realise Cross Currents, a residency and professional development project for craft-designer-makers based in Scotland and Newfoundland, Canada. After an open call, Florence Dwyer and Clare Robb went on residency to Bothy Project’s Sweeney’s Bothy on the Isle of Eigg, and Nicole Travers and Larry Weyand were residents at Fogo Island Arts on Fogo Island.
Cross Currents proposed that residents explore the historical, artistic and social parallels between Scotland’s West Coast and Newfoundland on Canada’s East Coast. These topics were unpacked in a series of sessions led by Chris Kabel (product designer, Rotterdam), Charlotte Linton (designer and anthropologist, Glasgow), Amy Prouty (curator and academic, Toronto) and Katy West (designer and educator, Glasgow).
Cross Currents builds on work undertaken by Bothy Project in The Pioneers (2016), where makers designed objects useful for its off-grid bothies, and Fogo Island Workshops, which has forged collaborations between designers and local makers to create furniture. Both organisations are committed to excellence in design practice which is informed by place-based artisanal knowledge and skills.
Watch Cross Current’s residents Florence Dwyer, Clare Robb, Nicole Travers and Larry Weyand in conversation with Katy West, on 19 May 2022 below.
To coincide with end of the project we’ve made a set of five special risograph posters, one each for the makers, and a fifth with the specially commissioned essay Listening for the call of place, by designer and anthropologist Charlotte Linton. The posters can be viewed and downloaded below.
Charlotte Linton’s poster, Listening for the call of place
If you would like to receive physical copies of the Cross Currents posters please send us an email with your name and address.
The project was generously funded through British Council Scotland and Creative Scotland’s Connect and Collaborate program, with additional support from Shorefast.
Thanks to selection panellists Heather Igloliorte, Irene Kernan, Nicolaus Schafhausen and Katrina Tompkins; An Nead Hand Knitwear, All About Willow and Sarah Boden on the Isle of Eigg and Winds & Waves Artisan Guild on Fogo Island.
Image 1: Cross Currents risograph posters. Image courtesy of Erika Stevenson.
Image 2: Cleadale Crofting Museum, Isle of Eigg. Image courtesy of Graham Niven.
Image 3: Fogo Island, Newfoundland, Canada. Image courtesy of Steffen Jagenburg.
Image 4: Sweeney’s Bothy, Bothy Project, Isle of Eigg. Image courtesy of Johnny Barrington.
