I am delighted share that I’ve received funding from Aberdeen City Council for my project WORK: Made With Love. This is part of a broader music project called “Work”, that I’ve co-written with Boo Hewerdine, exploring people's experiences of work, identity, contribution, what defines us and what gives our lives meaning.
This grant will allow me to record one of Boo and I’s co-written songs called ‘Made With Love’, with Boo Hewerdine as producer, and to work with my local community, including ACE Voices intergenerational choir, to add voices to the song’s chorus.
Photo by Aleks Ka, from the CFINE Community Music Project in 2025.
The City Council funded project also allows me to include parents’ voices in the conversation around the theme of ‘Work’ by facilitating a songwriting workshop for parents, guardians and kinship carers, to explore their experiences of caring, work, and identity.
The funding makes two key things possible:
1) it supports my development as a musician through being able to record and release Made With Love, and the opportunity to bring the brilliant Boo Hewerdine on board as producer
2) It means I can create free and inclusive cultural opportunities in Aberdeen, including the community choir collaboration and the songwriting workshop.
Boo Hewerdine and I in his studio in Glasgow for one of our co-writing days for the Work project.
An initial rehearsal of Made With Love with the ACE Voices Intergenerational choir in Aberdeen. Here Lucy Kennedy and I are practicing the instrumental accompaniment.
Boo Hewerdine has been a friend and mentor to me for almost a decade now, and I’m so happy that we’re finally able to record some of our co-written work. Made With Love is just the first step in our ‘Work’ themed project so watch this space!
I‘ve worked with the ACE Voices Intergenerational Choir in the past, and I’m very excited that we are embarking on this collaboration.
What’s the song about?
The song Made With Love is really about the power of love, and the way it gets us through the ups and downs of life. The lyrics refer to the processes of making, building and fixing and consider how the everyday objects we use came to be. Alongside that it speaks about our shared human need for love and connection.
The verses list things that were made with love, some of which refer to personal stories of mine, some which Boo contributed.
For example, one lyric, about a bicycle that needs repaired, I added because my husband keeps me moving by always fixing my bicycle (my main mode of transport) often before I even know it has a fault!
Alex in his happy place - repairing a bicycle in our workshop.
Our personalised pottery mugs from Barbel.
A coffee table my dad made by hand using the intricate and involved process of encasing thousands of short withies in resin, surrounding cross-section slices of wood.
I also wanted to find a way to give a nod to my dad’s work in the song, because of the love and care he put into many of his projects, including a wooden jewellery box decorated with the sun, moon and stars that he made for me, which I still cherish. My dad, Angus Dunn, wore many professional hats - joiner, woodworker, artist, builder, poet and writer amongst them. The lyric for him that made it into the song is about smooth sanded wood.
The lyrics also refer to clay on a potter’s wheel. This lyric refers to my connection to two generations of potters in my family. My Granny on my dad’s side, Alison Dunn, started the Cromarty Pottery in the Scottish Highlands, and after her my aunt by marriage, Barbel Dister took it over. When we were children, my siblings and I got a shot at working with clay with Barbel in her studio and I had the most amazing time making weird and wonderful creations, one of which - a sculpture of a witch with long flowing robes, a pointy hat and a cat familiar - is still on display in my mum’s house. Pieces of Alison’s and Barbel’s are beautifully peppered throughout Alex and I’s home.
The WORK: Made With Love project will culminate in a sharing event in Aberdeen, hopefully to coincide with the Kingswood Intergenerational Festival and the 10th Anniversary of ACE Voices’ partnership with Kingswood Court Very Sheltered Housing in March 2027. The sharing event will include listening to the recording of Made With Love, and the option for the songwriting workshop participants to share what they’ve created if they wish. For those who won’t be at the sharing event, you’ll have to look out for the song release in 2027!
