Working Together to Remember Part 2

Artists John Martin Fulton and Russell McGovern share more of their conversations wiith communities in North Lanarkshire

In Bargeddie, a village on the outskirts of Coatbridge just before it becomes Glasgow, we met a group of older women who were ready to work. Proof of their ‘post-industrial’ credentials came straightway as they talked about the past and fathers working in coal mines. They correct you if you get pit terminology wrong. The heritage is still there and it’s still theirs. These women understood the task we explained and were keen to grapple with their Covid experiences even if the process proved difficult.

Some of them felt their outputs of drawings and paintings were too rough and unrefined. But we explained that the sentiment was the real goal that mattered. They returned to work again with clay. Signs of solidarity and outpourings of shared emotions came through as the group got used to making art together. Like a team they supported one another with compliments (“that’s lovely Isobell”) and good humour (toilet rolls were mentioned frequently).

And in Shotts, another small section of North Lanarkshire this time towards Edinburgh, the concept of community and its importance was similarly clear. Without prompt the people we met there raved about local helping hands; how their community helped one another through the pandemic. Phone-calls to check on neighbours. Unprompted food deliveries. Kindness in myriad of new, little forms.

“Nobody could work Zoom in the beginning,” said one woman we met. “But we met loads of people from Shotts when we went online to organized events. We played games and everything, had a glass of wine or two. We weren’t always well behaved. It wasn’t till after that we actually met in person.”

Good friends, who had only met online at events organised by their local wellness centre, gave each other lifts along to our workshops . They met more people there. And they laughed and they shared stories openly and they commiserated and worried together. A community.

All of this as they tackled the shared task of mastering charcoal, hands dirty with soot like the North Lanarkshire forefathers working down in mines. Community, it seems, still lives in North Lanarkshire but is looking for work to thrive.

Many other groups have come forward looking for their turn to work on the hard task of mining and understanding the new experience we have all shared of a pandemic. Side by side our participants have supported each other, unpacked what has happened together, remembered together.

Because perhaps the best way of remembering is shoulder to shoulder.

John Martin’s web site | Russell’s Instagram | John Martin’s Instagram