An ambitious new artist commission with Bobby Niven, for Arbroath Town. The New Scriptorium is an artist designed and built structure that will be sited on the Abbey grounds for one year.

In 2019 The Arbroath 2020 Festival group invited artist Bobby Niven to develop a project that would be sited in Arbroath Abbey to mark the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath to celebrate the importance of the Abbey both historically and in contemporary culture.

This little building is a commission that is directly inspired by the history and context of the site. It explores and responds to the social, political and cultural histories of the Abbey and its influence on Scottish History. Bobby Niven has designed the building considering the history and skills in this medieval period along with the design and decoration of that time. The building was constructed off site and has a green oak frame created by Angus based carpenters.

The New Scriptorium imagines the Abbey when it was a busy working environment with a library or scriptorium at its heart. The Benedictine order of monks who established the Abbey were from the French Tironensian order, each monk had their own craft or skill, literacy and the making of books was one of the most influential.

The town of Arbroath grew up around the Abbey and so too; the red sandstone of the town with the streets running down to the harbour. The great Abbey, with its Round ‘O’ towering above the town, are completely inseparable formally and historically.

The New Scriptorium is devised as a place for writing and a place for conversation – a place of activity and to celebrate the power of literacy and learning. The structure of the programme for the New Scriptorium will include Writer’s in Residence, events, schools’ projects and more. This programme of activity, in collaboration with Historic Environment Scotland, transforms the building into a working space.

The Arbroath 2020 Committee is a partner in the Angus Place Partnership which includes Angus Council, ANGUSAlive Creative Scotland and Hospitalfield. We are extremely grateful to Historic Environment Scotland for working with us to achieve this project on such fragile historic ground. We are thrilled to have secured funding for this project through the Town Centre Fund and Creative Scotland.

We know that Arbroath Abbey, as a very large and active community, including monks who could transcribed and illuminate documents and bound early manuscripts into books. The ability to read and write and convey information and document history was as powerful then as it is today.

The colour, light and texture within the interiors are influenced by the illuminations within medieval manuscripts.

The common depiction of a scribe at work using both arms, bent at the elbow and wrist is an inspiration for Niven. The use of serpentine timbers within the timber frame creates a resemblance to this pose and places the figure of the scribe at work within the structure of the New Scriptorium.

Bobby Niven is a Scottish artist and founded the Bothy Project, in 2011, a growing network of small shelters across Scotland. Designed in collaboration with artists, architects, and designers, each of these simple structures is a unique response to the landscape around them, and an invitation to artists to spend time ‘off-grid’ exploring the environment and histories which hold them.