Outdoor Art for HP16

I recently ran a creative consultation project as part of a project called Destination HP16, which is using the arts to help regenerate the villages at the heart of the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Other partners in the project include Artworks for Business, Creative Bucks, the Roald Dahl Museum, One Church Street Gallery, Misbourne Abbey, Chiltern District Council and Bucks County Council.

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My role was to produce a short artist's residency to generate ideas for public art in outdoor locations near Great Missenden, and to offer these ideas for public comment. I recruited the artist Pippa North and the mixed-age Eco Club of Great Missenden Primary School.

Pippa and I introduced the group to the concept of public art, and we discussed the ways in which art and the natural environment can relate to each other. I gave my slide show of pictures from the Lascaux cave paintings to Mark Wallinger's proposed Horse, and Pippa brought in an amazing range of sustainable and recycled art materials for the children to choose from.

Having taken a tour of some possible sites for public art within walking distance of the school and made an ephemeral nest-like piece for the village green, the children began to discuss and refine some ideas for more permanent art.

The children mostly proposed large structures that they would be able to climb around and occupy. They wanted to make art from environmentally-friendly materials that they could interact with and use as personal play spaces, and that could also provide habitats for wildlife.

The den concept seems to have a timeless appeal that is possibly even stronger in these times of adult supervision and indoor play: a recent survey by Natural England concluded that ony 10% of children in the UK play regularly in green spaces, compared to the 40% of adults who did so in their own childhoods. 81% of children and 85% of parents agree that they would like to see more unsupervised outdoor play, and yet it is a struggle to reverse this very recent cultural shift.

Of course, this issue is at the heart of what I'm trying to achieve with Outdoor Culture: a re-wilding of humanity that I believe to be crucial to the health of our children, our environment and our society. As Simon Barnes wrote in the Times earlier this year, 'Without non-human life we are less than human'. Our need for wildness in our tamed lives is as 'colossal, sinuous, sensuous' as the tiger who came to tea in Judith Kerr's story.

Back in Great Missenden, the children of the Eco Club made fantastic models of their ideas for outdoor public art (the tiger never made it past the first sketch), which we mounted as an exhibition at One Church Street Gallery. Pippa and I then spent a Saturday in the gallery showing people around the work and seeking their views on the concept of outdoor art in local woods and fields:

'Fascinating show - such imagination! The children's ideas are wonderful.'

'Lovely pieces, really stimulating. Would love to see them realised full size.'

'We really liked the Head and the Pirate Ship. Great work'

'The giant's head is a beautiful idea. I can imagine a big giant wandering around the Chiltern Hills ... his head sticking out over the tree line.'

The artist Pippa North found the project very fulfilling emotionally and professionally, and was particularly impressed with the children's focus and skills. The teachers found that the project has helped them re-think their approach to teaching art, and plan to create more time and space for processes that are child-led and less directed by adults.

Outdoor Culture continues to campaign with Destination HP16 for the development of a local outdoor gallery where artists, learners and audiences can connect with wildness through experience as well as imagination.

Many thanks to Pippa North, Nicola Keating, Lyndsey and Dennis Keeling, John Scrimshire and Malcolm Godwin.