The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
THE SEA OF WELLBEING
Michael Alexander speaks to the St Andrews University postgraduate students who are organising a sea-themed wellness exhibition in collaboration with the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther
F or anyone lucky enough to live near the sea, access to the coast for walks and fresh air during lockdown has done wonders for the health and wellbeing of many over the past year.
For eight postgraduate museology students at St Andrews University, however, the links between human wellness and Scotland’s oceanic heritage – or blue space – has also inspired a collaboration with the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther.
When the students started working with the museum to curate By the Seaside: Heritage, Healing and New Horizons, they did not expect to be studying amid a pandemic, nor did they plan to design their first professional exhibition remotely.
However, the students have persevered and, with the digital launch of the exhibition taking place this evening, they hope that the easing of Covid restrictions might allow visitors to visit the in-person exhibition at the Scottish Fisheries Museum from late April/ early May.
Mattea Gernentz, the project’s writer and interpretation lead, said the exhibition was originally meant to coincide with Visitscotland’s Year of Coasts and Waters programming throughout 2020 and 2021.
However, the exhibition took on a new relevance with the Covid-19 restrictions, which sent a shared sense of isolation and uncertainty throughout the world. Suddenly, this exhibition on the ocean’s ability to heal and inspire became a “necessary consolation for mental and physical health in our everyday lives”.
“It explores the impact of blue space on our experience and wellbeing and has a wellness-oriented take on oceanic heritage,” says Mattea.
“It simultaneously directs our gaze outwards and inwards, urging us to consider how blue spaces impact our creativity, growth, and wellbeing, as well as pointing out ways that the sea has served as a means of both leisure and livelihood.”
The student team has had to overcome many obstacles to put together the exhibition, which explores humanity’s connection with water through physical and digital means.
Museum and gallery studies director
at St Andrews University, Karen D Brown, says: “We are immensely proud of how our students have adapted in these uncertain times to demonstrate resilience and creativity in curating such a meaningful topic for the Fife coastline and its residents during the pandemic.”
When conditions allow visitors to the in-person exhibition in Anstruther, they will see it’s been enhanced by a variety of innovative digital content.
For example, the show’s podcast, Sound Waves, interviews wild swimmers, artists, fisher folk, and others from the Fife community, while the website’s blog includes perspectives from the St Andrews community about how the sea has influenced their lives.
Through the exhibition and its programming for public engagement, the team hope to encourage reflection on how the sea has proved influential in lives across Scotland, and they are excited to bring the ocean directly into homes throughout the country.
The digital opening event this evening includes the keynote speaker Dr James Grellier from Exeter University, who is wellknown for his Eu-backed Blue Health Project of 2020, among other panelists, and a musical performance.
For the students, however, it’s also been an opportunity to get practical experience of curating an exhibition, albeit under difficult circumstances they could never have envisaged.
Mlitt Museum and Cultural Studies student Helen Sturm, who is marketing and fundraising officer for the exhibition, told The Courier it had not been easy being isolated during Covid but they were pleased with the results and hoped public feedback would be positive.
Giving an insight into her own circumstances, the 23-year-old American explained how she started the course at home in Maine, USA, last year.
After a month of face-to-face classes in St Andrews during October/november, she returned home to the USA before Christmas, and had only recently returned to Fife where, at the time of this interview, she was on the final day of her Covid travel quarantine.
“I was born and raised in Maine in the USA,” she explains.
“I went to university in North Carolina at Davidson College – a small liberal arts school where I studied art history and anthropology, and I also did some studio art there as a painter. I graduated in 2020 – virtually, at home. A year ago this week we were sent home.
“All of the jobs I applied for in the US all shut down. I really had no idea what to do next. The future just seemed really uncertain. I didn’t have any job prospects, the election for 2020 was coming up, I was concerned if Trump was re-elected what that would mean. It was just kind of stressful to figure out what was next.
“So I decided to apply to grad school early. I was planning on doing that in my mid to late 20s. I didn’t expect to go right into it. But I needed something that was productive to do and this seemed like the best option.”
Helen explained it was a “lifelong dream” to study at St Andrews.
As a 15-year-old, when considering undergraduate options, she’d visited St Andrews as part of a Scotland/england university tour before deciding to study in the US.
“Travelling to study in the UK seemed a little too much for me when I was 18,” she reflects.
Helen, who has an interest in mental health issues, says St Andrews very much reminds her of Maine where she grew up – and at the heart of this connection is the link to the sea.
“I’m a very creative person and also very introverted,” she says.
“Art has always been really important to me whether it’s hoping to work in a museum or producing drawings or paintings of my own.
“I’ve always found the sea to be a great source of inspiration.
“There’s just something mysterious about it. Almost like this darkness to it as well, that you don’t really know what’s going on beneath the surface. It’s also so beautiful.
“Back in Maine, our family house, which has been in the Sturm family for 100 years, is right on the water and that’s where I grew up.
“That’s where I would be with all my friends and I learned how to drive the boat and go sailing. All of my core memories of growing up have been there.
“You have a different kind of personality if you grow up next to the ocean. A kind of curiosity about the world, the natural world, that’s always been important to me and still is.
“So coming to St Andrews really reminds me of Maine. It’s kind of direct across the ocean. It feels like two separate parts of the same thing. The coastline is so similar. I’ve always lived near the ocean. That’s always been a point of reference for me.”
There’s no doubt the student experience has been very different for Helen and her fellow students and she admits it’s not been “ideal”.
When she started the Mlitt at home in Maine, which is five hours behind Scotland, she was getting up at 3.30am to attend online lectures at 9am St Andrews time.
Students have also been unable to visit museums in Scotland or in Europe. At the time of this interview, Helen has never even visited the Scottish Fisheries Museum where the exhibition she’s helped curate is to be held.
But on a more positive note, having gone remote again since January, the class has been able to hear a lot of interesting Zoom lectures from around the world.
She’s also learned a lot of new communication skills – forging new friendships and relationships with mentors and students, despite not being able to ever meet them in person.
“I think this course is invaluable for me though, because it has allowed me to figure out what I want to do within the field of the arts,” she says.
“And I really do love the PR and marketing aspect of it which obviously is my position for the exhibition. Without doing this course I never would have guessed that I’d like that.
“Also just looking and working with the fisheries museum archives – it’s been really really interesting.
“Not being a native Scot, it’s been fascinating for me.”
THERE’S SOMETHING MYSTERIOUS ABOUT THE SEA. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON BENEATH THE SURFACE. IT’S ALSO SO BEAUTIFUL