When creation and creatives are connected something special grows: minds are expanded, imagination is ignited and a fresh appreciation of woodland, soil and nature is achieved.
Growing Places, an exciting, engaging, and immersive Stroud-based project using art to connect people with food, farming, wellbeing, nature, and landscape, has been a living testament to this over the last year. The result is an abundance of unique artistic harvests gathered from workshops, residencies, and collaborations.
Set up by Walking the Land, an artists’ collective that has been active in the Stroud Valleys since 2002, Growing Places has sought to connect farming, food and landscape with the community through artistic expression.
Multidisciplinary artist and univeristy lecturer Susie Olczak, who ran workshops with children from the charity, Allsorts. Photo: Tracy Spiers Funded by the Cotswold National Landscape through a DEFRA initiative called Farming in Protected Landscapes, the project has been primarily based on land of the four partner organisations, Stroud Community Agriculture, Oakbrook Farm, Folly Wood community woodland and Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking.
Organised activities have brought ramblers, community farm members, mental health groups, food hubs, socially excluded groups and old and young people together in a unique way, whether that has been recording words on leaves, drawing with ink from trees, playing worms and ladders, or devising songs and poetry about composting.
One eye-catching and inspiring landmark has been The Gingerbread House, a small marquee designed and decorated to look like a gingerbread house as a creative place for local artists to paint, draw, create and lead workshops. Who can’t help but be inspired to narrate stories and led their imagination wonder in such a place? It has proved a hit with all ages.
At a special weekend gathering at Stroud’s Museum in the Park, which celebrated the intergenerational, multi-disciplinary aspects of the project through an uplifting and vibrant exhibition, talks, discussions and workshops in arts, singing, nature and storytelling, the public was able to see the outward expression and workings out of the Growing Places’ vision.
‘I spent my residency exploring the soil, ecology and communities at Oakbrook Community Farm and Hawkwood Centre to produce a collection of ochre pigments from the earth there, which I turned into watercolour paints and printmaking inks. I taught different groups, and we made monoprints and watercolour paintings which were transformed into origami moths. It involved thinking about the project’s themes, the location, the earth, soil and land and how we create with that, draw and respond.’
‘It’s been a great opportunity for children and adults to think more about nature, farming and how things are produced and where that can go in the future as well as making artwork that is temporary or permanent,’ she says.
‘Apart from the biological side of the fungal network we looked at the human mycelium, where we are, how people cooperate and are inspired by each other and that has become a network which is still in progress,’ says Bart.
‘This whole event has been very well organised and thought through by Walking the Land. We were given great outlines but enough space for participants to explore how they wanted to. An immense amount of people has benefited.’
Since Growing Places was launched in March 2024, workshops (including singing and poetry), walks, and outdoor events have been held, trees have been planted, woodland and hedgerows managed, and various structures built including compost bays at Stroud Community Agriculture made from larch milled from trees extracted from Folly Wood. In all, 22 artists, 30 community groups and four partners with land around Stroud have been at the core of the project and ongoing connections made. The ‘loom wall’, which screens the chiller at Stroud Community Agriculture at Hawkwood College, is being turned into an artistic wall to celebrate the estate’s weaving and dyeing history. The project has also facilitated ways to ensure locally grown organic food, which can be expensive, becomes more accessible by working with local food hubs and charities.
Speaking at the celebratory weekend at the Museum, Richard Keating, one of the lead artists with Walking the Land, and event organiser explained how thrilled the team has been by the response to Growing Places.
‘It’s been really heartening that so many people in Stroud have taken part and we’re really keen to forge those links between urban and rural and getting people to understand a bit more about healthy food, where it comes from and the implications for the landscape,’ he said.
‘It has been a real chance for some artists to change their practice. One of our artists who has been working as a sculptor, sustained an injury which made it difficult to handle heavy work, but she has found a new way of working. Some of the children said some brilliant things. One Year 1 child said: ‘Impressive work, do carry on,’ and a group of year 10 students started recalling how they used to enjoy being outside and how they needed to revisit that. They used ink made from things foraged from around the site and made some beautiful drawings and were thrilled with what they had done.’
Reconnections and new connections have been a common thread throughout the project, but as Richard Keating admitted, Growing Places, could easily be read as Growing People.
‘People and place are one in the same. From my own artwork practice, the distinction between community building and making artwork is very blurred, and it is why we do walks and get people out in the land and encourage them to make their own responses to their place.’
‘Walking the Land has been active for 20 years or more, but we can only put this scale of project on with funding. In the meantime, we will carry on encouraging people to walk and continue with our projects which respond to the landscape. We will gradually review what we have done with Growing Places, and this will give us some clues as to what we want to do next,’ said fellow lead artist Andy Freedman.
The feast of artwork, activities, creative expression, passionate speeches and sheer enjoyment from those who participated in this hugely successful and engaging project was evident at the Museum in the Park. While much of the work will continue and the conversations have by no means finished, it was a privilege for onlookers to see the fruitful outcome of the Growing Places vision.
‘It’s been an amazing celebration of community and art, composting, and recognising the importance of good food and good soil,’ says Abigail Large, exhibitions & events coordinator at the Museum in the Park.
‘I love the lovingly tended compost that we have on display. We’ve certainly never had compost displayed in the gallery before and I love the dead hedges made from Horsley Youth Group, which are amazing homes for all sorts of creatures. It’s a fantastic exhibition and a huge well done to Walking the Land.’
Well done, indeed.
cotswolds-nl.org.uk/looking-after/farming-in-protected-landscapes
walkingtheland.org.uk
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