It was standing room only at our second AGM for the Midsteeple Quarter Project earlier this month on Thursday 5th September at The Oven on Dumfries High Street. The AGM gave members of the community the opportunity to find out more about the progress of the project over the last year, view the development plans of The Oven and discuss ideas for the future uses of the Midsteeple Quarter.

Please join us at our Annual General Meeting on Thursday 5th September, to be held at The Oven, 135-139 High Street, Dumfries.

We would like to invite proposals from artists, filmmakers, photographers and groups for short weekend exhibitions within the Oven on Dumfries High Street. There is a fee of £250 to cover any costs, installation and invigilation.

We have an exciting opportunity to run a flea market/open top table sale in the Oven on Saturday 20th July and are asking anyone who may be interested to get in touch. The idea is for creatives/non-creatives to sell drawings, sketches and prints as well as clothes, bric-a-brax, records, books, vintage items and collectables.

Midsteeple Quarter is a very exciting community-led project for the town of Dumfries to buy back its High Street and for local people to lead on a contemporary living, working, socializing, learning and enterprising quarter in the heart of the town.

Midsteeple Quarter are celebrating a year of exciting events following the launch of their Community Benefit Society in April 2018! Over the past year, the project has continued to grow and connect with members our community and beyond, with a large membership and several events planned for the year ahead.

In January 2019, Midsteeple Quarter launched a fundraising campaign to raise enough money to go to an auction in London on 5th February and purchase two High Street buildings. We had less than 2 weeks to do this, and during this time we had some great media coverage in both local and national press, including The National, Scotland on Sunday and the Daily Mail.

Back in January we were visited by Community Land Scotland to film a case study of the Midsteeple Quarter Project. The organisation was commissioned to create two video case studies about their urban members and they used Midsteeple Quarter as the focus for one of them.

Auction Update: 117-119 High Street did not sell at the Glasgow Auction on March 19, 2019. Bidding started at £100,000. No bids were made and the lot was closed. Our board made the decision to register a bid at a fair price, based on what we knew the buildings to be worth. £100,000 was above that level. We expressed our intention to pay a fair price for the building to the current owners, but are none the wiser about what they plan to do next.

The Midsteeple Quarter Project are remaining upbeat despite failing in our attempt to buy two High Street buildings for the community at an auction in London last week. The fantastic response to our Crowdfunding campaign and the positive support from the town and further afield has taken everyone by surprise.