A native oak tree was planted in Dumfries on Friday to mark the second anniversary of the UK’s original Covid-19 lockdown.
The commemoration, in the grounds of Dumfries Museum, also honoured “all those who responded to the pandemic across Dumfries and Galloway”.
Depute council leader Rob Davidson welcomed people to the ceremony which included 10 local artists involved in the town’s Atlas Pandemica Maps to a Kinder World public art project and The Stove Network.
And he and council leader Elaine Murray planted the “Dumfries Oak” with assistance from the council’s head gardener Brian McAviney.
Dr Murray said the tree would also be “a place for people to go and reflect on the pandemic in the upcoming months and years”.
She added: “It’s certainly been a challenging, gruelling and ever-changing couple of years and we’re both delighted to see some sort of normality return to society in relation to Covid-19.”
Organisers said the tree will “signify a new beginning for the town – one founded on the shared experiences of everyone affected by the events of the last two years”.
Dumfries author Karen Campbell read a short story extract from the book, Winter Is Coming.
She was the council’s writer-in-residence during the pandemic and interviewed many key workers, recording their experiences in her book, Here is Our Story.
Judith Hewitt, museum’s curator east, received a limited-edition atlas which will now become part of the museum’s collection of the town’s local history during the Covid-19 crisis.
Another of the Atlas Pandemica artists JoAnne McKay read from her project, What Remains – it became an exhibition held at the museum last year.
Co-curator of Atlas Pandemica Robbie Coleman said: “The creative team involved in the project were asked to respond, as artists, to the changes brought by the pandemic that were happening around them.
“The artists followed their instincts across the project and were asked to consider the values and behaviours they were seeing as possibilities towards a more equitable world and this led to a rich ongoing conversation within the project itself about the future of the region and the role of artists in that future.”
