Got a printers proof for the book I’ve produced for ‘School Looks Around: Dartmoor’. The book features a series of textual posters, poems, photographs, a map and audio CD that provides a soundtrack in response to Dartmoor.
In the research for my recent residency in Dartmoor, two things stood out that formed the basis for the work produced. One was how culturally we tend to think of landscapes as natural phenomenon, with some inherent quality that exists outside our understanding and ownership of them, even though humans have altered almost all of the British landscape in some way. The other was this quote: “Geography imposes arbitrary lines upon territories that are essentially continuous. Everyday life fixes these lines in place by reiterating the performance on which the permanence of this delimitation depends.”
This framework:afield documents the creative collaboration between Devon Arts in School, South Dartmoor Community College, 271 Year 8 students and Joe Stevens, as part of The School Looks Around. The audio features a Dartmoor soundscape with the students description of the landscape, in a combination of spoken word and background sounds.
I worked with 30 children from South Dartmoor Community College; together we collaborated on creating on mapping their emotional landscape. Seven maps were created in all and were the product of a course – Emotion Mapping – I helped devise in consultation with the art and media depart at the school.
