This summer and autumn our team of local artists are working with people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds to provide the opportunity for them respond to our Shropshire heritage and landscape through artworks, words, sounds and video. The project, known as Hey! Earthlings! is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
We have been busy with walks and workshops since May, and originally focused on Old Oswestry Hillfort. Our exhibition, ‘The Hey! Earthlings! Cabinet’, has been on display through July and August in the Gateway Centre, showing artworks created in Oswestry by different groups of people, who have crossed borders to live in the UK.
The project moved to Shrewsbury in August and new participants took part in a workshop at Doctor’s Field, beside the River Severn. On a very hot day the artists, community workers and participants walked down the long steps into the field to enjoy activities. We explained the name of the project, how we are all Earthlings, of the earth, interdependent with it and each other. And we talked about the legacy of Charles Darwin, born in his family home on The Mount, above Doctor’s Field, and who walked these paths.
Then we listened through headphones to a hydrophone set in the River Severn. Then heard the small, strange sounds that come from the inside of a willow tree. The Field, probably named long ago for its medicinal herbs, was covered in this dry August with crab apples, hawthorn berries, sloes – and drifting thistledown.
Everone played parachute games and shared stories and languages. There were opportunities to use a Polaroid camera and an iPad, and to make short films, collaborative poems and sound recordings.
After lunch, participants enjoyed editing their films and making cyanotype prints, tiny books and collages. It was another Hey! Earthlings! day, full of goodwill, playfulness, laughter, and trust.
More participatory events will take place on 6th. and 27th. September see flyers below, and sign up here: https://bit.ly/Earthlings-Shr-
The Cabinet will move to Shrewsbury Library in October and then to Shrewsbury Archives in November sharing the work of Shrewsbury participants. Free entry, everyone welcome. Look out for exhibition opening dates and times.
For more information see our Hey! Earthlings! page.
