Artistic creation as care for life
Dalby Forest Winter Research Residency 2025: Working with the Culture Declares Emergency Blueprint for Change
Title after Andreas Weber (2023) “Sustaining Fecundity: Artistic Creation as Care for Life” published in the Australian Journal of Environmental Education.
Written by Louisa Chase
At the cusp of Spring this year I spent two intensive weeks living, practicing and researching in Dalby Forest on the southern slopes of the North York Moors National Park. I had responded to an Open Call – a partnership between Crescent Arts in Scarborough and Forestry England. The residency offered time to research, reflect and develop new ideas or work. Unusually, there was no requirement for a specific outcome. With the removal of the need for outcomes and production, I had two uninterrupted weeks to pause, slow down and reconnect – key aspects of change-making in the Blueprint for Change. For the two weeks of this residency I wanted to reflect on the working practices I have developed over the last 5 years and review them in the context of the Blueprint for Change.
Before the residency began, I read and absorbed the content of the Blueprint for Change (BfC) over a number of weeks. On arriving with the forest I put into practice the working processes that I have developed so far, reflecting on these in relation to the stages of the BfC and making adjustments; a kind of in-vivo study of my practice.
Working with Truth-telling, Care-Taking and Change-Making in my Practice; Reflecting on responsibilities, reprioritising values, slowing down and reconnecting, and aiming for zero-harm footprint.
For the past five years, following an unanticipated change of path via art school, I have been reflecting on my processes and materials, and making choices which move towards more sustainable, decolonial, and zero-harm practices. Informed by my pre arts-education background in community ecological restoration and sustainability projects in Aotearoa, during which I was introduced to Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects, I entered a process of profound grief during my time at art school because of the daily use of materials and processes that were toxic to both human and more-than-human life. With the support of my course mentors I moved completely away from toxic materials, and began to diversify my practice and reduce its footprint.
In 2023 I received an Arts Council England DYCP (Develop Your Creative Practice) grant to explore the integration of sustainable creative practice, European indigenous knowledge, and health (of all species) which allowed me to develop this work further. As well as a reduced footprint, this has resulted in a more resilient and adaptable practice resilience and adaptation being essential elements of care-taking in your practice within the BfC framework. I now have processes in place for a bio-regional practice that can shape-shift and is not dependent on where I am and whether I have access to certain resources: art materials, internet, studio space, etc.
Longer-Term and Bigger-Picture Thinking
Decolonising thinking and doing, advocating diverse voices, reparations and rights of nature.
It is important to me not to have a pre-formed plan in advance, not to impose my ideas on a place that I don’t know and have not yet built a relationship with. I prefer to be fluid and improvisational, taking my time to get to know an area, allowing the multi-species inhabitants to adjust to my presence and to influence and direct my work.
So in practical terms, my work often unfolds something like this: I walk until I feel the ‘pull’ and invitation of a site to work with, then after a period of time getting to know each other (often through sitting quietly with all senses open) I might respond to the prompt of a bird call, animal presence or change in light, wind or precipitation by moving into working with outdoor movement practice (loosely connected to ecosomatics), rituality, writing, photography, or foraging for natural materials. Follow- up work will incorporate research into ecological, scientific, spiritual, cultural, and ancestral perspectives, triggered by events or happenings. For example during this residency it was a stand of storm-fallen birches that drew me, and which I have subsequently worked and researched with. The recognition of what draws you is a skill I learnt through plant medicine and healing practices in Aotearoa – both from remnants of European indigenous knowledge and from Rongoā Māori traditions.
During the two weeks I wanted to further identify and step back from narratives that reinforce binaries of subject-object, nature-human, male-female, and narratives that prioritise intellectual knowledge-formation over other ways of knowing – narratives that privilege the views of institutional ‘experts’ and eliminate voices of experts- through-experience, and of indigenous knowledge. One of the things I realised during this residency is how many remnants of European indigenous knowledge and ways of being are hidden in plain sight. Spend the day with someone who has spent their lifetime birding for example (as I did during the residency with Richard Baines of Yorkshire Coast Wildlife), and you will witness the ways in which their knowledge of local landscape, ecology, and bird behaviour, and their adaptations of their own behaviour in order to become less obtrusive, are grounded in ancient ways of being – tracking, looking for signs, understanding and interpreting different calls and behaviours.
There are many examples like this – from the knowledge of foresters, farmers, herbalists, archaeologists, and bushcraft practitioners to those who keep ritual and ceremony alive, or carry knowledge through story-telling, dance and music traditions, or through the healing arts. If we whole-heartedly swallow the narrative that it has all been lost (and some certainly has) then perhaps we might consider who this narrative serves. Perhaps it serves to disempower the general populace and discourage them from having agency over their own healing and health, their own stories, their own relationships with more-than-human kin. Perhaps it serves to keep the majority dissociated, disconnected, and lacking in agency.
What happens if we re-member, and seek out these practices? What happens if we consider that knowledge is held not only by humans but by more-than-human kin and by land. And what if the knowledge of how we humans can listen to and interpret their communications is not as lost as we might think?
Beyond Notions of Commodity and Virtuosity: Residencies, extractivism, positive handprint and restoration of ecosystems.
Historically, some artist residencies have engaged with place in an extractive way – extracting materials and information for the purpose of making work which is then sold or marketed as an exclusive commodity. There are, of course, many exceptions to this, but residencies whose structure actively engages with aspects of the BfC such as positive handprint, restoration of ecosystems and supporting local transition organisations are few and far between.
I was keen to build something into my residency time that focused on these. So in consultation with the chairperson of Friends of Dalby Forest it was agreed that I would attend to an area where storm-fallen branches had crushed a new hedge that had been planted by volunteers only 10 days before a winter storm decimated the area. My task was to clear branches, rescue whatever small hedge plants I could, replace their supporting stakes and clear away the storm debris that prevented light from reaching them. At the simplest level, my labour saved time for the volunteers and hopefully gave the young hedge a better start in life. A small form of reciprocity with the forest and those who give so much time to care for it and its multi-species inhabitants.
Through the process of reflection during this residency via the lens of the Blueprint for Change, I also developed plans for sharing my work within my local community at home, and for sharing it more widely (Substack coming soon). My reflections raised more questions about who we make art for and with, and I will continue to advocate for non-extractive practice through my visual work, writing, and occasionally through talks and leading walks and workshops.
Incidentally, through following the creative processes I have briefly outlined above, during my time in Dalby Forest a nest of fallen birch-twigs emerged within the hollow made by the roots of a storm-fallen birch. I feel sure I was subliminally imprinted by springtime bird behaviour.