23.04.25
Alongside Dundee’s Changemakers Hub, we’ve been delighted to bring back Fabric – an informal peer-learning journey to share, reflect and imagine how collective action can shape a better tomorrow.
Bringing together creative practitioners and community organisers, this iteration of Fabric focused on community climate action, giving participants the knowledge, skills, confidence and connections to fuel future work or projects.
In this blog originally shared with Dundee’s Changemakers Hub, Shona Cherry takes us on a field trip to The Scottish Crannog Centre for the final Fabric session, ‘From Dwellers to Changemakers’, reflecting on the Fabric journey and a day exploring learnings from our ancestors.
The 2025 Fabric cohort, like the ones gone before, is a group of climate and creative community members with one thing in common – Dundee. The city has brought us together, for a variety of reasons, and the stories we’ve shared with each other during the four steps of this Fabric journey have been connected by the common thread of this incredible place we all love.
Sometimes though, a wider perspective is valuable and our day outside the city at The Scottish Crannog Centre provided us with new and different viewpoints. The benefit of stepping away from the daily norm and our own wee worlds, not just into a different space but into an otherworldly place, is altering in some way. Even if it’s not entirely obvious how.
Set on spectacular Loch Tay, the centre team is currently rebuilding the Crannog which sadly burnt down in 2021. The fascinating process by which they embrace traditional skills with a peppering of modern supports was shared openly as the Fabric group wandered the village. The peacefulness and tranquillity of this place can’t be overstated, which may have been helped by the unusually calm and sunny weather.
This amazing space and the incredible team there tell tales of life from the iron age. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced a bunch of individuals with such endless knowledge and passion for their work. As we heard stories of what life may have been like, I was distracted by birdsong – a reminder of the constant connection in nature between past and present – and I wondered if the birdsong would have been the same back then.
We were told how communities had to work together to survive, not venturing far for subsistence. Perhaps aware of other crannogs on the loch but really nothing beyond that. In the context of our globalised world today, that’s hard to wrap your head around and at the same time, rather enticing. Sometimes our ‘hyper-connectivity’ can feel overwhelming. So many people to follow and connect with. So much information.
But our modern-day communities have an opportunity to create real change and elevate us. We can take the benefits of the world we live in now, use the lessons from the past, and discard the things that do not serve us or our peers. We were told that:
“What we’re doing here is trying to find our way back to the start of the story.”
What surprised me was that the centre is a social justice organisation. Being able to draw comparisons between the work of Dundee Changemakers and The Scottish Crannog Centre was unexpected but affirming. They have a strong commitment to social causes, the environment and sustainability, fair work and accessibility – what we at Changemakers might call, a just transition.
Whether implicit or explicit, they are doing the multi-faceted and diverse work of an organisation with far reaching goals and impact. This place isn’t just a museum or a historical educator (although those things are, of course, extremely important), they are actively bringing communities together around some of our most pressing societal issues, through sharing stories from the past and connecting them with those of the present.
Throughout the day, we were free to explore the variety of activities at the centre, which included how people from that time might have prepared food (the home-made cheese with wild garlic was delicious!), made clothes, created and used tools, and entertained each other.
We were treated to a hilarious puppet show which animated stories of crannog life in the most unexpected way. Telling stories is a way of explaining ourselves that has existed throughout time. It’s how we understand our past. Many folk stories might have only existed verbally but are often there to communicate or connect us to lessons for the future – such as the utterly sustainable life that these people might have had.
The stories we heard perfectly captured their self-sustaining way of living – there was no extraction, only interaction.
After our meander through time and a generous lunch offering, we were joined by Claire Cooper from Bioregioning Tayside. Bioregions are a way of reframing how we see ‘place’ beyond our current understanding. Considering our geography from the perspective of community, land, availability of resources, rather than the manmade boundaries we all know, was a shift. ‘Change the Frame, Change the Story’ is their thought-provoking tagline.
We were prompted to consider how we adapt and respond to the environment we find ourselves in, physical or otherwise – valuing, shaping and interacting with one another, and the idea of reinhabitation.
Claire shared some powerful examples of storytelling for impact, that combine the natural environment, art and sustainability on a massive scale. One of which was The Awakening – a 9,000 sqm art installation of a giant hand sited on the Coire Lairige at the Spittal of Glenshee. Co-designed by Tayside-based artist Martin McGuinness and Fraser Gray, it was inspired by the Glen’s many connections to the legendary pan-Gaelic giant hero Finn mac Cumhaill, including the story that he is asleep under the mountains with his warriors ready to be awoken at a time of great portent to come to our aid. Made from 2,500m of Jute and Geotextile it was installed to coincide with the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 in November 2021.
Again, we were directed to consider how the past can inform the present. The idea of looking back to understand where we are now is important for bioregioning, as it is for most of the ways we consider the future.
I left the Crannog wondering what this means for us, at Dundee Changemakers Hub, as well as the many other climate and social action groups in the city. We cannot go back to where we were, no matter how many of us might wish for a bygone, less complicated time. There is a way forward that allows us to take what was precious and worth saving from the past and combine it with the incredible advances we’ve made (the good ones, at least!), to create a better future – just like they’ve done at The Scottish Crannog Centre.
With renewed enthusiasm we have an opportunity to reweave connection, create stronger social fabric, and take action that will bring us beyond what we experienced with Fabric.
We took a long, slow exhale at the end of March. After celebrating the changemakers in Dundee and the incredible work of local people and grassroots organisations driving climate action and social justice in our city, Dundee Changemakers Hub turns its attention to what’s next, with the intention to continue to foster connection, facilitate collaboration, and elevate community action.
Shona Cherry is Hub Manager at Dundee Changemakers, and has been working in sustainability, mainly in food and drink, for over 6 years. Her work-life of 30+ years has taken her through many industries, sectors and roles, and led her to return to a role supporting and serving the incredible people of Dundee.
Dundee’s Changemakers Hub is delivered by a collective of four local community organisations: Transition Dundee, The Maxwell Centre, ScrapAntics, and Uppertunity. The Hub offers support, events, workshops and micro-grants to connect and amplify collective community action.
The Hub is part of a growing national network of Climate Action Hubs funded by the Scottish Government’s Climate Action Fund, which aim to build local awareness of the climate emergency, develop local plans, help groups take up funding opportunities, and contribute to a Just Transition.
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