New Beginnings

New year, new beginnings.  I've been developing three new outdoor art projects recently, and having a great time getting out of the house along the way.

Last month I spent a few days on Dartmoor with the (award-winning) artist Martin Prothero, walking, talking and wild camping at a few choice spots.  Martin's got a unique take on environmental art - he's trained in fine art but is also a busy bushcraft teacher and environmental educator for people like Wildwise and the Somerset Wildlife Trust.

Martin's best known for his 'carbon light life' series - animal footprints caught on blackened glass and presented as art in light boxes.  He created an installation of these for me in our Hide! project at College Lake in 2010, replacing the glass windows of a bird hide and lining its back wall with collaborative work made with local children.

Martin often strives to find ways in which the natural world can represent itself in art.  He may frame and  select, but it is often wildlife that does the composition.  Our next project is attempting to apply that philosophy to the rivers of Dartmoor, beginning (we expect) with the Dart itself and its many tributaries. The project is likely to include sound recordings, live events, drawings and participatory walks. Funding permitting, we'll get going this summer.

On the same trip, I made this short film to introduce my own art project for 2012 - Wild Water.  Thanks for the camerawork, Martin!

I'm interested in drawing attention to the way in which our relationship with water has been industrialised and de-personalised.  We buy our tap water from companies that profit from extracting it from our river systems; we complain about leaks and hosepipe bans, but we also flush it down the loo; most of us drink too little of it and waste too much of it.  Our behaviour is full of contradictions, and of course it is only when supply is restricted that we see our dependency on water for what it really is: a defining characteristic of our species.

'Wild Water' is a way for me to get back to a more honest relationship with water, and to remind people just how good a mountain stream can taste, flavoured by the rocks and soil of its journey.  I like the idea that by bottling water as art, I am removing it from the planet's water cycle, containing it, commodifying it ... however desirable and inevitable its return to the system may be.  Long after our extinction, water will continue to shape the landscape, as species come and go.

I've also been conspiring with artist Duncan McAfee, a regular Outdoor Culture collaborator.  Duncan's work often takes sonic forms, exploring voice, language and story.  We worked together on an audio guide and sound art pieces for the Sensory Trail at Burnham Beeches.

Duncan and I spent a weekend in Snowdonia planning a new piece, that has evolved out of discussions we've been having for some time about bothies - see this previous posting for the first incarnation of the idea.  We stayed in one of my favourite bothies, Penrhos Isaf, that I've visited many times since first finding it in the dark forest of Coed Y Brenin three years ago and reporting on the experience here.

Duncan's vision is to bring together the cultural phenomena of bothies and traditional song, animating a number of buildings through acoustic performances by local people or visitors with a connection to the bothy. The bothy, like the song, is shared over time, transcending ownership and individuals.  The project will result in a set of sonic portraits of places and people, presented as a publication and CD.

We had a good weekend at Penrhos Isaf walking in the forest, talking things through and staying up too late on Duncan's birthday. On Monday morning we were joined by Aled Thomas from the Forestry Commission, which owns the bothy.  Aled had very kindly agreed to come and be interviewed for the project, and had a fascinating take on the building, that he first stumbled upon in the late 1970s.  It's because of progressive thinking from people like him that the Mountain Bothies Association is allowed to maintain several open properties on Forestry Commission land.  Aled gave us a real insight into the evolution of access and leisure as FC priorities alongside forestry, and he's a fantastic ambassador for the movement to re-connect our communities with the natural world.

It feels good starting the year with some embryonic concepts to work up, alongside the projects for which we already have the funding.  As January comes to a close, we've just had the fantastic news of a major grant for a new project on a nature reserve in Oxfordshire.  I'll put the details up on the Outdoor Culture website as soon as the funder will let me.

Just to make the year even more exciting, there's a major pan-England action research project in the offing, to stimulate, evidence and make the case for outdoor learning in green spaces, working with 200 schools over 3 years and substantial government funding:  I just hope that whoever wins the tender to deliver it can build properly on the learning of Creative Partnerships programme of 2002-2011, and avoid repeating its mistakes.  The project has a golden opportunity to spotlight green learning in the national education debate, and not a minute too soon.

Have a great year y'all!

Urban Wild Camp

Don't get me wrong - I love festivals and occasionally use campsites, but I prefer a tent in splendid isolation.  A flat, dry, grassy spot next to a stream or lake, away from footpaths, out of the wind, with a stunning view, high, remote and wild.  Perfect.

I suspect that the happy campers of Occupy London Stock Exchange might also prefer the shores of Loch Enoch or the upper Dart valley to their concrete surroundings in the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral.  But this is purposeful tenting, seeking to confront rather than escape the injustices of modern life.  And Occupy The Chilterns wouldn't have had the same impact, although its time may come if the government perseveres with the eco-vandalism of HS2.

I met a banker friend last night for a drink after work, and went via St Paul's to check out this urban wild camp.  The protest is regaining its focus on corporate greed, now that the Church of England has come to its senses and stopped eviction proceedings.  The campers' other landlord, the Corporation of London, is running a campaign in the run-up to the Olympics called 'Green to Gold', to promote awareness of the open green spaces it manages.  Perhaps they could tempt the protesters to a nice leafy site on Hampstead Heath?

It's hard not to be impressed by the Occupy camp, with its democracy and idealism, and guy ropes lashed to storm drains (you try getting a tent peg into a pavement).  What struck me most was there was so much dialogue going on, with protesters, reporters, passers-by, tourists, supporters and opponents all engaged in the creative thrum of discussion.

As a species, we've evolved a strategy to cope with the numbers of people we encounter in towns and cities: we don't acknowledge their presence, we avoid eye contact and we certainly don't start conversations about the cost of capitalism.  If and when this bold urban camp is struck, the people left behind will go back to ignoring each other.  But I don't think the voices of dissent this winter will easily be silenced, and this public debate is healthy.  It's amazing what you can do with a tent.

Why Outdoor Learning?

I'm giving a presentation for teachers tomorrow as part of a day's exploration of outdoor learning at The Downley School near High Wycombe.  Having to make the case for why a school might develop its outdoor learning has been a useful exercise, in that it's forced me to order my thoughts on the subject and collate some of the research I've been reading over the last couple of years.  I thought I'd use this blog to record the thinking.

When adults over 30 recall their favourite places to play as children, their memories are overwhelmingly of outdoor locations.  But current children are increasingly less likely to have these memories.  Children in the UK today get about a quarter of the outdoor time that their parents did as children.  There's been a social change:  stranger danger, busy roads, neighbours we don't know, a general aversion to risk, the rise of screen time.  My contention is that this change is bad for the environment, bad for society and bad for children.

The environment suffers because of our lack of awareness and understanding.  Children who do not know and love the natural world will not grow up to look after it.  Almost every significant conservationist across the world had transcendent experiences of nature in childhood:  it follows that the way to produce environmentally responsible citizens is to immerse children in green spaces, so that contact can lead to a relationship and on to a sense of stewardship.

Society suffers because the sharing of outdoor space promotes social interaction and cohesion.  Our buildings shelters us from each other as well as the elements.  It is children playing together outdoors that creates community and the identity of place.  With so few of us working the land now, a better understanding of food production and the management of finite resources is a precursor to sustainable living in cities and countryside alike.

Most of all, our indoor culture is damaging to children themselves.  In his 2005 book 'Last Child in the Woods', Richard Louv linked the rise of childhood obesity, depression and behavioural disorders to the loss of children's outdoor experiences and called it 'nature deficit disorder'.  People began to view our disconnection from nature as a public health issue.

Why do we need time in green space?  One explanation from Dr William Bird, a UK-based GP and health consultant to various public bodies, is that modern humans still have the physiology of hunter-gatherers.  We have existed in our current physcial form for about 200,000 years.  We invented agriculture only about 10,000 years ago, compulsory schooling 400 years ago and industry even more recently.  Our culture has evolved ahead of our minds and bodies, that were designed for different times.  We are animals that are designed to play, learn and work best outdoors, in an environment where carbohydrates are scarce but physical activity is plentiful.

So how is green space beneficical to modern children?  The answers are simple and intuitive.  Green space promotes physical movement, and such exercise is a wonderdrug, preventative of a dizzying array of health problems from diabetes to dementia.  71% of us think we get enough exercise, but half of us are mistaken in this: an estimated 31% of the UK get the exercise we need.  Childhood obesity has doubled in 20 years.  Proximity to green space is a significant determiner of longevity and reduces health inequalities, with low income earners in the greenest places living as long as middle income earners in the least green places. 

There is also a green agenda in mental health policy.  MIND published its' 'Ecotherapy' report in 2007, suggesting that doctors should prescribe green exercise as a treatment for mild depression, their research having shown it to be at least as effective as antipressants and therapy.  Gardening, country walks and conservation work scored far higher than indoor forms of exercise, with participants reporting lower stress, higher self-esteem and a heightened sense of meaning and purpose.  The UK currently spends about £300 million on antipressant prescriptions every year.

Green space can have a big impact on public wellbeing, as a less tangible but more spiritual need.  The concept of 'biophilia' suggests that we are most at home when surrounded by other forms of life.  Hosptial rooms with views of greenery have higher recovery rates than those without them.  We feel more human when we are among other plants and animals:  as hunter-gatherers, we are hard-wired to feel at home in the natural world, and abilities to understand, predict and exploit it have been naturally selected over millennia.  Our culture labels the man-made as artificial, yet in truth we are a part of nature rather than separate from it: wildness is within us.

So outdoor learning is one way in which educators can respond to this situation, and help to create happier, healthier children with a more balanced relationship with the natural world.  A growing body of research, mostly from the US, is also suggesting that green time can enhance children's performance and atainment in school.  Children who spend time in green space experience fewer symptoms of ADHD.  Children with three years of regular outdoor learning achieve higher scores in maths, reading, wrting, listening and thinking skills:  significantly, their attendance and concentration are also much better.  There is a campaign for a daily 'green hour' based on the claim that it aids 'learning readiness'.

Research in the UK on the acclaimed Forest School system, introduced from Scandinavia, found that pupils who do their lessons in a wood once a week, enjoy more confidence, better social skills, can concentrate for longer and have more developed motor skills and language abilities than their indoor peers.  Forest School is an approach that any school can take up over time, and is probably the most systematic and robust educational vehicle we have for re-connecting our children with the real world around them.  The teachers I know who have trained as Forest School leaders are passionately vocal about its merits.

Why outdoor learning? Because schools have an opportunity to redress the imbalance in children's lives, and to be part of the solution to nature-deficit-disorder, along with better urban design and public policy.  Because outdoor learning creates happier and healthier children who do better at school and in life.  Because it is a powerful tool that any teacher can take up and use in their practice.  Because sometimes it's obvious that children in a building are like fish out of water, and it's hard to learn when you're drowning.

http://www.outdoorculture.com/

The Beeches Came to Burnham

About a thousand people braved the sub-zero temperatures on Thursday night to come to Burnham's annual Christmas Fayre, organised by the local Lions Club.

Outdoor Culture's contribution was the production of a community project with artist Lynda Cornwell and the Burnham-based Mona Lisa Arts and Media, based at the Flux Gallery on the village High Street.

Lynda worked with a local youth group and some A-level art students to create four moving image projections of the ancient trees from Burnham Beeches, which we projected large-scale onto the buildings of Burnham High Street for the event last week.

The project was intended to re-connect the village with the forest that bears its name, and to play with the Christmas tree tradition by using light to celebrate nature in the dark time of the year.  And of course, creating the images gave the participants a reason to get out and enjoy Burnham Beeches, including a night walk under the moonlight.

The weather was really against us - the projector hire company insisted, just days before the show, that we house their equipment indoors and project out onto the street through windows, which meant re-thinking the four sites we had originally planned and getting last minute permissions to use people's upstairs windows (Thank-you The Olde Swan and Sherrif Mountford!).  Then there was the issue of the DVDs being edited in Newcastle and delayed in the post by the snow ...

Anyway, we got there with some bright creative thinking from production manager Tim Hand (eg mounting projectors in cars!) and the show looked great.  I particularly liked the way that traditional-looking landscape images morphed slowly into crazy neon fantasies.  The show repaid the time you invested in looking at it, and seemed to spark people's interest.

Well done Lynda, and thanks to Rhonda Fenwick, Tim Hand and his crew, Ruth Best, Stephen Spencer and Paul Sherrif.  Project funded by the Big Lottery Fund through Awards For All.

More images can be seen at http://www.lyndacornwell.blogspot.com/

Fire and Water; Moon and Moor

I lucked out with the weather on Dartmoor the weekend before last.

A familiar route from Postbridge over Hartland Tor and past the stone circle at Grey Wethers, skirting the edge of Fernworthy Forest and stopping overnight at Teignhead Farm (below).

If I cut dead wood from a forest and then burn it nearby, so that the carbon released from the wood can be re-absorbed by the trees and turned back into oxygen and wood, have I stolen the carbon or just borrowed it? 

What a gorgeous night - a fire to keep the chill at bay, starry skies and a fine moon.  Risotto, chocolate and a few nips of single malt.  Went to bed a happy human.

Woke up to find ice on the tent and frost everywhere the sun hadn't hit.  Filtered some tasty clear water from Manga Brook to fill my bottle.

After breakfast I wandered over Sittaford Tor and across the bog (squelch - one wet foot) to Statt's House, before winding my way back along the East Dart through Sandy Hole Pass, pausing for a cup of tea at the waterfall.

Returned to the car with a heady sense of wellbeing and satisfaction.  Got my Dartmoor fix.

Bothy Chorus at Kielder

I'm developing a project with the artist Duncan McAfee called Bothy Chorus.  The idea is to create a piece of sonic art that uses the buildings and immediate environments of bothies as musical instruments in a composition.  Duncan's piece will combine ambient recordings with new music performed live in the bothies and interviews with bothy users.

Bothies are simple buildings in the UK's remote mountain areas, maintained for free overnight use by anyone who needs shelter in the hills. Many are maintained by the excellent charity http://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/  Originally used by farming families, shepherds or stalkers, bothies are now used in outdoor recreation by walkers, climbers, paddlers and cyclists.  'Bothying' has become a cultural phenomenon, and no wonder:  with a roaring fire and a roof over your head, it's a spacious and sociable alternative to wild camping.  How many other historic buildings can you stay in for nothing?

I've commissioned Duncan before for a project in Burnham Beeches and we've become friends.  He's a really interesting artist, whose work often takes sonic forms:  http://www.duncanmcafee.org/

Duncan's Bothy Chorus will explore ideas of shelter and wilderness; luxury and survival.  I hope that by sharing the mostly unheard sound worlds of a few choice bothies, we'll be able to communicate something of the value of these fragile resources, that help everyday people to access our beautiful outdoors.  Duncan's piece will be shared as a sound installation to tour a few galleries, accompanied by a publication and CD.

We're waiting on the outcome of a couple of funding bids before we can start in earnest, but we manageed to fit in a little pre-project research around the bothies of Kielder Forest in Northumberland a few weeks ago.

The trip sort of started badly, with a dull trudge along a forest track ending in the discovery that the Bothy at Kielder Head was closed for the summer.  Hmmm, that's a production error. A couple of hours from our start we were back at the car and heading for Roughside bothy on the other side of the massive Kielder Water reservoir.

This area feels very wild and remote, all along the England-Scotland border.  The mountains are relatively untrod, boggy and flat-topped, and mostly carpeted in pine plantations.  Footpaths, we soon discovered, can often exist only in the map-maker's imagination ...

So we fared a little better with Roughside, bothy number two of the trip, finding the place empty and setting about getting a fire going as night and rain started to fall.  Then we got invaded by a group of teenage lads from Middlesbrough with a transistor radio and some very big knives.  So much for our quiet night - but then I guess you never do know who you'll end up sharing a bothy with.  They did share their beer with us, but conversation was awkward, and we ended up carrying out a lot of their rubbish the next morning.

The next day we set out for Wainhope bothy high above Kielder Water, walking up moutain bike tracks and forest roads in the absence of the footpath on the map.  Wow - what a jewell Wainhope is.  Set in a few acres of pasture holding back the forest, it's a beautiful two room bothy with an outbuilding for sawing and storing firewood.  The water from the neighbouring streams is pretty brown with peat, but there's a route marked by posts up the hillside to a perfect mountain spring.  I filtered the spring water just to be sure and it tasted absolutely gorgeous.

A forestry worker called Jacob turned up on his bike to liberate some food he'd stashed a day or so before, and we had a good chat about the bothy and the area.  Thanks Jacob for telling me about the Kielder Marathon in October - I'm hoping to persuade a friend of mine to run it next year as part of a film we want to make about the science of running.

Noone else turned up, and we had the place to ourselves for the night.  After dark, we went for a short wander and were treated to lots of shooting stars - although Duncan always seemed to be looking in the wrong direction ...

So it was third time lucky with our Kielder bothies, and we'll definitely come back to Wainhope if we get the funding for our Bothy Chorus project. 

With special thanks to Paul Hearne, the MBA volunteer who looks after Wainhope so well.

Traverse

A few pics here from last week's adventure in the Lake District with my friend Chris. 

Trail magazine recently featured a Lakleland 'Haute Route', a multi-day trip mostly following valleys across the Lakes.  We wanted to join up some of the ridges for a high-level alternative, wild camping along the way as much as possible.

We walked from Coniston in the South, to Mungrisdale in the North East corner of the Lakes, taking in 15 summits, of which 10 were new for me on this trip.  Our packs were pretty heavy with food for 5 days plus camping gear, although we'd also packed a few luxury items:  like 500 ml of absinthe ...

Day 1:  Old Man of Coniston, Swirl How, Great Carr, Little Carr.  Wild camp by the disused reservoir at Greenburn.  Gorgeous.

Day 2:  Crinkle Crags, wild camp close to the saddle at Three Tarns.  Exhausted by an earlier mistake in the fog that led to some extra downhill and then back uphill miles.  In the cloud or rain all day, couldn't see a thing.  The fog was so thick in the night, I didn't pee far from the tent.

Day 3:  Bowfell, Esk Pike, then down past Sprinkling Tarn to Styhead Tarn and up over Green Gable, Brandreth and Grey Knotts to the youth hostel at Honister.  Wow, a shower, a bed, real food, beer, cooked breakfast.  Funny conversations with a vicar called Tim and a social worker called Matthew.


Day 4:  High Spy, Maiden Moor, Cat Bells and into Keswick for dinner.  Out along the disused railway track for a stealthy wild camp in a meadow by a bend in the River Greta, in a steep wooded gorge.  Finished the absinthe watching bats from the river bank at dusk.  

Day 5:  Struck camp at dawn, while being devoured by midges.  Walked for a good hour before second breakfast at Threlkeld, then a stylish finish to the trip  up Hall's Fell Ridge over Blencathra and down the tongue to Mungrisdale and a car.  Fantastic views all day.


Cheers Chris - where next?