Floating Presentation

Midlothian

Remembering Together

What is Remembering Together?

Remembering Together is a Scottish Government-funded national project to co-create covid memorials in local communities. The memorials will honour the people we have lost, mark what has been lost and changed in our lives, as well as preserving the best of what we have learned and created together during the covid pandemic. To do this, Greenspace Scotland have commissioned artists in every one of Scotland’s 32 local authority areas to co-create covid memorials with local people. Artists are working with communities to develop and install memorials across Scotland by 2024.

Midlothian Remembering Together Work

Summer 2022 - Yvonne Weighand Lyle was selected as Artist for Midlothian by the Midlothian Steering Group, who represent local organisations and groups across the county. The project was split into 2 phases - Phase 1 exploring the priorities of local people for a memorial in their local areaPhase 2 realising and installing this memorial.

Midlothian Remembering Together Work

Phase 1 - Yvonne delivered a series of creative workshops and drop in events to:1) engage local people in creative workshops 2) gather evidence on the county’s views on what they would like to have as their county covid memorial and where these memorials should be. December 2022 - Yvonne wrote a report summarising the ideas and aspirations of local people

Midlothian county’s priorities for their memorial

Sited in several places across the county

Outdoors

Environmentally friendly

Accessible

This year

Delivering creative workshops and engaging with local community groups and organisations, including community trusts and Midlothian Council, to co-create designs for multiple commemorative benches. These benches will be installed with natural planting, along public greenways, and in public parks: creating new places to sit, reflect and remember.

This reflects Yvonne’s own experience of Midlothian’s intangible culture and heritage and will also inform the planting scheme.

The design of each memorial will take inspiration from the Midlothian Gala Day tradition of dressing doorways with bowers of paper flowers.

Midlothian people who said this was especially important not only as poignant to memories of being outdoors during covid, but also due to the reduction of countryside space through the ongoing housing developments and increase in building across the county.

The naturalistic planting is intended to increase biodiversity and encourage native species reflective of traditional Midlothian countryside.

The benches

The interventions will be environmentally friendly, in tune with the landscape, and will require minimal ongoing maintenance.

The benches

As permanent and utilitarian memorial, these accessible installations provide a long-term resource, featuring solid benches and natural planting.

The benches

These bowers of memorial tangibly represent something good and positive emerging from what was a dreadful experience during the pandemic and symbolise our communities’ resilience.