01/09/2010 by James.

I thought I’d share some work i n progress using leaves from Westonbirt Arboretum and a couple of botanical gardens in Cornwall.

I’m always picking up bits and pieces wherever I go, a leaf here, a rusty cog there, its something I’ve done my whole life, and I find it very satisfying when they all come together to make artworks, like miniature versions of the world.

When I was a child I had loads of collections - feathers, fossils, matchboxes and coins, crystals and seedpods, like my own private museum.

These days I still gather them and dot them about my house or stitch and bind them together, but I’m also working with and for museums, using my knowledge of how searching and discovering in creative ways can really foster a love of learning, and of our natural and cultural heritage.

I guess what it does is to give people what can often be a rare chance to see the world for themselves, taking time to notice what’s important to them, and the beauty and preciousness of everyday ‘treasures’.

Tomorrow I’m back at College Lake with Foundation Stage teachers from Ashmead School, planning sessions for Reception age children to explore and discover the site with me.

I also heard today that the Search Museum in Gosport has got funding from Renaissance South East’s as part of Green SLIME (Science Learning in Museum Education), to employ me to work with them and a local school, developing a resource supporting other schools to use creative ways to learn about biodiversity.

And in amongst all this I’ve been researching bird migration for my own artwork at College Lake, with the aim of sharing with visitors how this little oasis near Tring is just one piece of the very large ecological puzzle that its bird visitors need to survive.

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18/08/2010 by James.

I know its not January, but with the new academic year starting, and my work needing to fit with the school year more and more, this year I’ve kept most of August aside to get things done that I never have time for, and feel like things are just about to kick off again at the start of term.

Its been great to be able to step of the treadmill of work and get my websites updated, visit museums and galleries that I’ve been meaning to for a while, carry out research for my installation at College Lake, and generally reflect on everything that’s happened so far this year, and all that I need to plan and prepare for in the Autumn.

Its meant that I have spent a lot more time than normal staring at a computer screen, writing c.v’s, making the creative ecology site more user friendly, and getting slightly obsessed with twitter.

As someone who can feel fairly isolated by being based in rural Wiltshire, I’ve found twitter invaluable for keeping up to date with what everyone in the arts, heritage and environmental worlds is up to, making really interesting new contacts and being signposted to useful documents and events.

But I remembered this morning that another thing I was aiming to do this Summer was to actually switch the computer off and give myself some time out, exploring my local patch. It was a beautiful morning and just what I needed, getting up above everything, with a breeze blowing, a pregrine turning and swooping to avoid mobbing crows, and butterflies all around me on the downland flowers.

I try to keep a balance in my work life, and that’s not easy when you’re fascinated by the relationship between so many things. Yes I love to go out walking and quiet peaceful time in the hills or woods, and to make things in a quiet, meditative sort of way, but I also love the buzz of a stimulating conference, a meeting with like-minded, passionate people, and travelling around the country making new connections and sharing ideas.

And most of all I love to combine the different strands together. Its been great to have a few weeks to get things up to date, to visit the new Ashmolean in Oxford, and discover for myself the Sir John Soane’s treasure packed rooms, but I’m itching to get back out and be working alongside the children again, sharing my passion for the outdoors.

So, tomorrow I’m heading to Bristol for a meeting with English Heritage about developing the family backpack project for the Stonehenge landscape, and will pop in to see the Art From The New World exhibition at Bristol’s Museum & Art Gallery that I’ve heard so much about (on twitter…). I’m also talking to another museum about working together to create a teacher’s resource on exploring biodiversity creatively, and on the 2nd September I’m meeting with staff from Ashmead School in Aylesbury to plan an exciting creative outdoor learning project as part of my residency at College Lake.

So, its all go again, exploring, making, sharing and learning, all mixed up together, and I can’t wait.

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09/08/2010 by James.

Right now I’m occupied with thinking about the overlap in my practice between art, learning and interpretation, as in interpretation for heritage or environmental sites.

Most of my work at the moment falls into three main areas -

1. Developing interpretation materials for English Heritage/The National Trust by consulting creatively with children and young people, for Stonehenge and its surrounding landscape

2. Responding to the environment of College Lake Reserve in Bucks for Outdoor Culture to develop an installation for a bird hide and creative learning programme for a local school

3. Mentoring or providing professional development for artists, teachers and museum educators on the role of the arts/creativity in learning

I personally see all of this as my practice as an artist, because my practice centres around the role that art can play in supporting individuals to engage with the world around them, and in ways appropriate to them. However, I describe my role to different people in different ways depending on the context in which I’m working, because the popular image of what an artist is/does often doesn’t quite fit. This seems to stem from the image of the artist as being somehow separate from society, not someone with an integral role, apart from to entertain or provoke, or to make things pretty.

But can’t art be interpretation, can’t interpretation be art, and what is the relationship of both of them to learning?

I’m not going to try and answer these questions, in fact I’ll probably ask a lot more. What I’m interested in doing is looking at the role that artists can and do play within the field of interpretation and learning, and explore the relationship between these areas within my own practice.

When I was at college, studying Fine Art and making sculptures that explored the relationship of my body to the landscape around me, I was told by one tutor that my work was too beautiful. She told me that she wanted to be shocked, to be challenged. My response at the time was that that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to engage people, to connect with people and to seek to connect people with the material-reality of the world around them, through engaging them with my artwork. I wanted to encourage a kind of empathy with my experience as the maker, through our shared cultural and bodily relationships with the artwork. I wanted to start to set up a dialogue between them and me, via the materials and processes that led to the creation of the object, and so to the place where the materials might have come from.

In the 15 years since then, my work has developed to engage much more directly with other people, through participatory projects and creative learning initiatives, but the direct sensory experience of exploring a place, and making in response to that, has stayed with me.

I understand that there are lots of kinds of art and artists, and that not everyone is trying to achieve what I am. There are also various approaches to learning, and interpretation materials in heritage and environmental settings take various forms. But what links my work across these areas is the belief in the need for each individual to be given the opportunity to engage with a place, a material, an object, in ways that leave room for them, for their own personal context.

My installation at College Lake could well be seen as a form of interpretation. The other interpretation already on site could also be seen as art - illustrations of the species and habitats are placed around the site and work well. But what I want to offer at College Lake is an opportunity for engagement and learning through interaction with an artwork, within the context of a specific place, that could be said to be poetic, in that it offers more than the sum of its constituent parts. I hope that it will offer a chance to be moved or changed by the experience of that specific environment, rather than being purely illustrative.

So can, and should Museum and Gallery interpretation look to encourage a similarly individual, emotional and imaginative response to a place or an artefact? Can one work of art offer a ‘way in’ to another?

There are plenty of examples of artists carrying out residencies in Museums (see Art & Artefact: Museum as Medium by James Puttnam), of creating interventions that respond to or highlight the background of specific artefacts, but these tend to be temporary, and afterwards things tend to return to normal, like the ‘parachute’ art projects that pop up and fade away in schools. Some interpretation aims to evoke a place or time using film, sound or smell, but is this art? Is there room for an audience or participant to interpret and adapt the experience to fit their own needs and experiences?

My interest is in exploring how artists can facilitate more meaningful interaction with sites or exhibits, questioning assumptions, and giving permission for alternative interpretations to be discussed and shared, in ways that can be transformational for all involved. Can (should) Museums, Galleries and Nature Reserves look to work with artists on a longer term basis, to support a re-evaluation of what a site can look and feel like to visitors, and what they might gain from interaction with it?

As with successful artist-teacher partnerships, this could be beneficial for both partners, with artists offering alternative ways of presenting and interpreting artefacts or information, whilst gaining from the in-depth knowledge and experience of site (Museum, Reserve etc) staff/professionals.

My work in education, especially on behalf of 5×5x5=creativity, seeks to support a move towards permanent change - a move towards educational practice that is responsive to the needs of the participant, that places them at the centre of the learning experience. I see my work in this context as being socially embedded art. I am acting from a position within the system, working in partnership and effecting change through dialogue.

Can involving artists in developing interpretation do the same? Can interpretation evolve in ways that value and respond to the individual, and provide information, rather than simply placing emphasis on the ‘official’ story of an object for example? Can we release our grip on telling people what to think and instead start to focus on engaging and asking people what they think, supporting them to learn for themselves? (See ‘Curiosity’ at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery)

I was watching ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’ last night on BBC 4, filmed at The Freud Museum ( http://www.freud.org.uk ). The staff at the Museum seemed to be exploring similar issues to those mentioned here, with a new director looking to make the Museum appear less elitest, and a discussion amongst staff debating whether letting the objects on display speak for themselves or increasing the amount of interpretation would be best.

The programme seemed to infer that the office staff as theorists/academics took a different view to those staff who were more hands-on. Essentially the Museum was struggling to understand what their visitors wanted and who their visitors were; whether to focus on Freud’s theories or to draw on the life of the Freud family and their personal effects.

I guess that some of them were worried about ‘dumbing down’ and felt anxious about change. From my own work with Museums, there often seems to be a divide between those that conserve and study artfacts, and those that seek to encourage greater access to them. With interpretation lying at the  boundary between curation/research and learning/access, it isn’t surprising that there is some conflict.

But as a more creative approach to learning begins to creep into our schools and museums, encouraging more inclusive and person-centred practice, I think that Museum interpretation has a lot to learn and gain from it.

Its not about ‘dumbing down’, its about providing access to a wider range of people and encouraging greater dialogue, resulting in interpretation that is multi-faceted and responsive to the needs and interests of everyone. As people who explore the world around them in creative ways on a daily basis, artists could be the ideal partners in helping this to happen.

After all, what is the point of preserving artwork or wildlife at a specific site if we don’t seek to forge links between them and their local communities, to allow learning to take place in ways that are moving and meaningful to the individuals of that community, using the site as a valuable learning resource and raising awareness of its importance.

Art to me is not something separate that might occasionally seek to engage with society, it is a way of exploring and engaging with the world, which when embedded within our institutions can lead to powerful social and environmental change.

(For more discussion on co-creation of exhibitions with artists and the public, see Museums Association website)

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03/08/2010 by James.

I went back to college Lake Reserve yesterday, for the first time since I confirmed which hide I’m going to be working in, to create my installation.

It was nice and quiet, with the odd family wandering about, so I had time to just sit quietly in the hide, to draw, write and see what was on the reserve.

I also wanted to really ‘breathe in’ the atmosphere of the hide. It is called Castle Hide because it was sponsored by Castle Cement, previously Tunnel Cement, the company that quarried the site from 1967. It was decommissioned as a quarry in 1991, and some faded photographs in the hide show what it was like in its quarrying days.

Back before the site’s industrial past it was arable land, the farm being owned by the Caldwell Monastery.

So it has a rich and interesting past, and that’s part of what I’m interested in. I don’t want to present it as some kind of untouched paradise, an isolated parcel on nature. I believe that we need to recognise how we are nature, and that any denial of that only worsens any nagative impact that we may have on our ecosystems. If we want to build more sustainable, happy and healthy futures, we need to recognise how we impact on and can work with, the systems that support us and all other life on earth. We cannot divide ourselves off in some way, although our language and culture may try.

I’m also interested in the fabric of the building. Its an honest building, of wood  screwed together, with perspex windows and viewing slots covered by pull down flaps. It has spiders living in it and some kind of mouse living and scratching in the roof. It has a patina from years of use that you can’t manufacture.

I guess what I want and need to do is to allow the hide, the site’s history, and the wealth of wildlife that makes the site its home (whether all year round or seasonally), to speak through me and my artwork.

I’m tempted to explore the lives that the migratory species have away from here, the Common Terns, The Sand Martins and the Warblers, and even some of the butterflies. Where do they come from? What do their other homes look like? What changes are happening there?

My installation will need to be be a kind of interpretation, a distillation of what makes College Lake special, in its history, its biodiversity and its links with other sites around the world, with specific reference to the view from this little wooden hide, perched on the bank, up above the water.

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26/07/2010 by James.

Not quite enough room to link them into 360 degrees here but you get the idea; a gorgeous spot on National Trust land, with heather moorland, rocky crags, views out across the ocean and plenty of wind to blow away any thoughts or worries clogging the brain.

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26/07/2010 by James.

An evening wandering around the rockpools…

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15/07/2010 by James.

I went on my first visit to the College Lake Nature Reserve last week. Its a Berks, Bucks and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) reserve, near Tring in Buckinghamshire.

Its a beautiful and surprisingly large site, and I’ve driven past the half-hidden entrance many times on my way to visit family in Hertfordshire. There’s a large lake with small areas of woodland and chalk grassland, and a wealth of bird and animal life including breeding polecats, sand-martins, barn owls etc.

I’ve been commissioned by Outdoor Culture to create an installation in one of the bird hides, together with artists Martin Prothero and Linda Cornwell, responding to the site and its wildlife.

I’ll also be working with Ashmead Combined School in Aylesbury, to support reception age children to explore the reserve and their own grounds in creative ways.

The bulk of the work will be taking place from September, but I don’t want to wait to go back until then, so will be making a return visit soon to spend some time watching and recording the insect and bird-life, and finding out more about the site’s history as a chalk quarry.

The ideas are certainly bubbling up already, its a great opportunity to explore how man-made landscape features can be developed for wildlife, and how the arts can be used to support people’s developing environmental awareness. I’ll be back soon with more information, images and artwork as things develop…

In the meantime, for more information on Outdoor Culture just follow this link…

www.outdoorculture.com

And to read more about the Trust and College Lake see

www.bbowt.org.uk/content.asp?did=23523

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28/06/2010 by James.

A drawing from this morning in my studio of a hornet found at the roadside. Coincidentally I also spotted one in the woods this evening whilst walking my dog, a low throbbing hum called my attention to her, slowly hovering around an opening in a tree trunk.

More info on these beautifully impressive insects on the Natural History Museum website

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25/06/2010 by James.

I went for a lovely long walk out on Salisbury Plain today. Not many animals or birds about as it was midday and they were being a bit more sensible than me, but the flowers, clouds and bird / cricket song more than made up for it.

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26/05/2010 by James.

Its that time of year again when the sun starts shining, the world turns green and projects swell up to fill all my time. Not that I’m moaning, after a quiet year last year its great to be busy again and brilliant to be meeting and learning from a real range of people and places.

Since I last wrote I’ve been continuing to travel up to NE London and work in partnership with Churchfields Infant School. The Year Two children’s journey through the sessions at school and in Epping Forest led them to want to make a nest inspired woven sculpture in the grounds which continues to evolve according to their developing ideas.The school have also placed new noticeboards within the playground containing documentation from the duration of the project (as well as on the school’s website), so that parents and other visitors can keep track of its progress.

The Reception children at the school were inspired by seeing this structure and worked with myself and a teacher to create/define their own space outside using canes, lengths of fabric, string and tape. It was wonderful to see them so engaged for so long. The conversations and the role play around the growing structure was so rich, with writing and mark-making onto flags and signs decorating the outer walls, stars taped to the floor and a telescope built into the walls, amongst lots of other things.

I’ve also been continuing to visit the 5 settings of the Kingston Upon Thames 5×5x5=creativity cluster, with the artists working in partnership with Nursery and Reception classes in schools and children centres.

Its been fascinating to get a glimpse of how groups of children, and the artists and educators working alongside them, have grown in confidence in expressing their ideas, exploring inner and outer spaces through a range of resources chosen to suit their needs and interests. An emphasis has been placed by the majority of settings, on researching how creative ways can be used to support children to access the outdoors and to build relationships, and on the days I’ve visited there have been clear links between settings in the way that children have used string and tape to create webs or traps - winding, wrapping and tying the features of the landscape and each other together.

Its something that keeps coming up for me recently, this connecting of people and places, both physically through children and young people’s play and investigations of the world around them, and socially as bonds are created and new relationships negotiated.

Recently I worked for The Salisbury Festival, the BTCV and Wiltshire Young Carers at Harnham Water Meadows near Salisbury. Here, on the Unearthing Stories project, a storyteller Jamie Crawford worked with the young people to tell and develop stories linked with the landscape and their own life experiences, they had a chance to carry out practical conservation work, and I introduced them to ways of working with willow, creating sculptures whose form and structure was drawn from the wildlife and features of the meadows - the pollarded willows, the nesting swans and the insects that fly and live along the rivers and ditches.

This last week I also worked at an Earlyarts Professional Development Day hosted by 5×5x5=creativity in Bath. The day was centred around the use of Intelligent Materials - open-ended recycled or natural materials that offer no prescribed use for the children (or adults) that play and make with them, so supporting the children to follow their own ideas. This time I shared my own approach to using found, natural materials, and offered the artists, educators, researchers and play-workers a chance to explore branches, leaves, bark and fir-cones together with raffia, wool and string.

And somewhere in between all this I have been making time for myself to enjoy the green lushness that Spring brings to my part of the world - watching foxes from up on the downs, tracking down a long barrow amongst the sweet honey scented bluebells of West Woods, and keeping an eye out for the pair of Red Kites that seem to have taken up residence somewhere near by.

From now on, although busy, things calm down a little and I can think again about how all this can inform my more individual work. I have been working on adapting an old jacket of mine with finds and marks, and have various other bits and pieces on the go, gathering, exploring and finding ways of connecting all those treasured finds and experiences together.

( A quick reminder, if you’re interested in creativity and learning, the Making Waves conference at Bath Spa Uni on 18th June should be an inspiring day. For more info download a programme from the 5×5x5=creativity website events page)

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