We are working with artists from the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire, Yorkshire and London who will run artist led workshops with our community groups according to their specialisms.
Wendy Pratt - is a poet, author, editor and workshop facilitator living and working on the North Yorkshire coast, where she grew up. Her recent book, The Ghost Lake, is an exploration of North Yorkshire, grief, and her working class roots, and stories about Mesolithic people and a prehistoric lake, which was long listed for the Nan Shepherd Prize. Her most recent book of poetry, Blackbird Singing at Dust, is out now. She will work with people living with dementia, socially isolated men living in Lancashire and rural farmers, helping them to creatively access memories and personal histories.
Dr Kaajal Modi - is a multidisciplinary artist-researcher working through creative practices to explore how making in collaboration with diverse communities (human, microbial and otherwise) can be a way to recover climate heritages in ways that open up new speculations on how we might live in the future. Their practice-based PhD, Kitchen Cultures (2019–2024) explored food fermentation in collaboration Global Majority women in their own kitchens over the COVID-19 lockdown as a negotiation of multispecies ontological politics through digital and postdigital practices of metabolic intimacy. Kaajal will work with women recently released from prison and members of Leeds' Kurdish Community.
Yorkshire Peat Partnership - Lyndon Marquis- Lyndon will lead Settle Stories Writers on a field trip exploring peat restoration and how peat and its surrounding moorland environment is traditionally represented in art and culture
Rob St John - Forest of Bowland National Landscape will support local sound artist and writer Rob St John to work with SELFA, a children's charity operating in the Yorkshire Dales and along the fringes of Bowland. Rob is an artist and writer based in rural Lancashire.
His practice is focused on the blurrings of nature and culture in contemporary landscapes. He works primarily across installation, sound, moving image and text.
His work, usually based on slow periods of fieldwork and socially-engaged practice, has been shown/heard at Tate Modern, Victoria and Albert Museum, The Barbican, The British Museum, The National Gallery, Tramway Glasgow, The Royal Geographical Society, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, and many others. He has variously produced, edited and contributed to numerous publications, both artistic and academic.
Letters to the Earth and Kay Michael. - Letters to the Earth is an award-winning global participatory and story-telling organisation, mainstreaming connection with nature to activate change-makers and build the environmental movement. Launched in the UK in 2019 by theatre-makers, artists and writers, its aim is to facilitate mass engagement with the climate & nature crisis via creativity and connection. Their global campaigns, workshops and artworks help people realise their interdependent relationship with the wider web of life, opening their emotional connection to the state of the planet, growing their sense of belonging, and increasing their capacity to respond to the environmental crises of our times.
Kay Michael is an activist, theatre director and writer. Kay and Letters to the Earth will work with primary schools on a curlew project with Wild Ingleborough.