Jim OShaughnessy profiles a project where the arts are being used to help reconnect society with nature.
Arts activity, when focused within a natural setting, helps create a spiritual or emotional bond with nature. These connections have all but gone from the modern world. Nature or the environment is seen in a reductionist way as simply a physical resource for economic use. The Forest of Avon Partnership connects people to trees, timber and woodlands by enhancing natural environments close to local communities. The project benefits over one million people who live and work in and around the Bristol/Bath area. Recreating an emotional bond between people and the natural environment is a key aim of our Arts and Learning projects. It is now widely acknowledged that such experiences bring real improvements to peoples quality of life, promoting wellbeing and general happiness.
Much of our public art has focused on functional pieces of work providing new seats, benches and marker posts. The Badocks Wood marker posts act like standing stones marking several of the entrance paths to this urban but ancient woodland. The marker posts, benches and seats for this project were made from locally grown oak. Design workshops within local schools produced patterns and symbols to decorate the posts. In the final stages of the project, sketches and designs made by pupils, were used by local artist Peter Margerum, to carve patterns and images into the oak posts.
Arts projects also help interpret the landscape and things happening within it.
Interpretation and creating messages about the effect of human actions on the environment is becoming more important. A Hedgerow Awareness day, for example, had some typical community arts activities, but critical to the event was participatory performance art by locally-based street art group The Desperate Men. The local Tree Warden contacted me about a suburban hedge at risk from neglect and fly tipping. The hedge formed a boundary to the local football pitch; it hadnt been managed for some time and had mature trees growing in it. After some research, the hedge was found to be significant in terms of both culture and biodiversity. It was 1,000 years old and acted as the parish boundary. I invited the European Hedgerow Inspector to the Awareness Day and he informed people of the significance of the hedge and the dangers of fly tipping and lack of management. The day progressed well, and slowly people realised that the Hedgerow Inspector was in fact a performance artist. The performance engaged with the community and was able to transmit complex and delicate messages bringing about a positive change in behaviour. One message that adjacent communities needed to realise was tipping garden waste at the bottom of the hedge was killing the hedge.
I now see the Environment sector working more with artists to transmit important messages about the wonder of nature and its self-regulating cycles. Science is increasingly pointing to the fact that we in the Industrial Growth Society are living beyond the carrying capacity of the planet. Transmitting complex messages through a range of arts media, will target our emotions as much as our intellect, resulting, I believe, in a greater chance of behaviour change towards sustainability. At the same time, the arts can switch us on to appreciating nature, forming an emotional bond with the planet that makes us feel happy.
Jim OShaughnessy is Projects Manager for the Forest of Avon.
t: 0117 953 2141;
w: http://www.forestofavon.org.uk