The Valley Thick with Oaks

This academic term Imagining Woodlands ran a course for English Literature students at the University of York.  The course looked at woodlands from different perspectives including literature and poetry, art, archaeology, science and conservation, and involved lectures, practical workshops, and visits to local nature reserve St Nick's.

The students were then asked to create their own project as a response to the course, and present their work for assessment and for the Imagining Woodlands team.

The range of responses was excellent! Students had thought about woodlands from a wide range of perspectives including poetry, film, novels, politics, mythology, tree symbolism, topiary, soundscapes and music, walking, psychogeography, slowness and speed, and nature in the digital world. After each presentation there was a fantastic exchange of questions, comments and ideas, with deep thinking and real engagement in the subject.

Particularly encouraging was the realisation that a group of 25 young people had spent time thinking deeply about the value of woodlands and our relationship to them through this experience, and would take this knowledge into their futures. There was a real sense that each student had engaged strongly with the subject and would be continuing to be inspired beyond the course itself.

And the Valley Thick with Oaks? The course takes place in Derwent College, a beautifully landscaped campus with mature trees around a lake. The name Derwent, as Suzi revealed to us in the session, means the valley thick with oaks. A suitable setting for our subject.

Thank you to the University of York for enabling this new course to take place, and to St Nick's Centre for Nature and Green Living for their contributions.

Events to engage with the invisible

I have a number of events coming up this summer, which are informed by my explorations in Aylestone Meadows for the microseasons project. I will be exploring Things We Can't See (as I wrote about in my last post), do join me if you can.

Friday 15th June - Fruit Routes - 12-6pm
Barefoot Orchard, Loughborough University Campus.

Join me in the Yurt to experiment with ways to make visible the Things We Can't See. Part of a 3 day programme of events for the Fruit Routes edible campus project. See their website for details.


Saturdays, July - September - Invisibility Walks, Aylestone Meadows -1-3pm
Assemble at the car park at the end of Marsden Lane, Aylestone Meadows, Leicester.

Take a creative walk around the Meadows to engage with the invisible. This will be a gentle walk where you will be guided to do simple creative activities to connect more closely to this lovely nature reserve. These walks are commissioned by the University of Leicester's College of Life Sciences Health Matters project. Suitable for all ages, children must be accompanied. FREE BUT PLEASE BOOK!

Click on a date below for details. 

Saturday 28th July Invisibility Walk
Saturday 11th August Invisibility Walk
Saturday 29th September Invisibility Walk

Printing with UV

I started collecting things that make pollen (grasses, wildflowers) from the pollen trap sites and I wanted to experiment with how I could make images from them. When I'm at the sites, I keep thinking about the air and what's in the air that we can't see... pollen, pollution particles, etc. and how could I make this visible?

 

In the past I've done a lot of work with cyanotypes, making images from the sun's UV. UV light is from the part of the spectrum that is invisible to our eyes, so it's on my list of Things We Can't See. I took some of the things I had collected and placed them onto UV sensitised silk screens to see what I got. I've been layering up prints from these screens and I'm starting to like the results. It seems to me that layering up images goes some way to representing the many layers of the sites I am working with, and I like how some of the prints have background colours that could be things floating in the air.

I've also started playing around with a microscope to make images, especially of pollen and the pollen traps. My microscope isn't powerful enough to see pollen up close, but it's still interesting to see what is revealed. I could definitely see particles floating in the liquid in the pollen trap which I couldn't see with the naked eye. I will see if I can process these images into prints too.

I'll be exploring more ways of making images using Things We Can't See at the Fruit Routes event on 15th June (check their website to see what else is happening that week). As well as using the microscope some more, I'm hoping to do something with gravity, and possibly try something with the weight of air!