on converting a spruce plantation into a forest & other projects that inspire, by Cathy Fitzgerald
From the category archives:
‘The aim of the drawing is to move the discussion of sustainability from a very general and abstract opinion, to more direct prisms of interaction between people. In that, the experiment is in watching the move from problem calling to solutions, creations, or expressions. The main element is the “flower of [...]
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One of the biggest problems in trying to engage people about climate change is that it’s a very abstract idea. Apart from all the controversy at the moment that is distracting attention and understanding from the very worrying facts gathered by thousands of the world’s leading scientists, it still remains very far removed from people’s [...]
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Things have been busy in our woodland over the last year and the year ended in a dramatic fashion with a storm from the east that saw 10 of trees come down (four more have to come down as they are leaning precariously – if you are coming to visit don’t dawdle on the driveway!).
Over [...]
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Hi all,
Just an update on our chipping party that we planned for Easter last weekend. Well, the weather forecast was bad but in fact it was a beautiful spring weekend. Many thanks to friends, Eileen and Steph, even turned up early on Good Friday before we were to start chipping on Sat to help drag [...]
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Hi everyone,
As you know we had our small spruce wood thinned in January – over 200 trees were felled and that created large piles of branches all around our site. I’m talking piles of organic material about 5 feet high in places! Obviously you can leave some to decay naturally, as seen in my previous [...]
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This post is a bit overdue but it was an important step in the recent thinning of our wood, in the process of converting it to a mixed species, permanent forest. As we decided to remove about 30% of our 24yr trees in our woodland, this meant that from our 2.5 acres 250 trees werefelled! [...]
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For Irish Tree week 2009 and beyond, spend 20 min to see this inspiring project on bringing back ‘permanent’ rainforest (and rain), to local communities and oranguatans in deforested Kalimantan. It is simply an astounding project that covers restoring huge levels of biodiversity (trees, fruit & energy crops and wildlife) local economies, people and their cultures, [...]
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A big hooray for all those that have been wondering when attention on ecological problems like climate change would seriously be examined in the Arts . The long established UK organisation, the Royal Society of Arts, has been making sterling efforts to both profile the few and encourage more arts practitioners to start looking at [...]
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A friend who know my interest in arts & ecology projects alerted me to the talks below. Great to see this happening, and particularly think there will be much interest in ‘art in allotments’ in the future!
The Airfield House Trust in Dundrum, Co. Dublin, is pleased to announce a series of talks accompanying the residency [...]
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follow me on twitter/ecoartnotes
My art & ecology notebook documents a SLOW ART project. It's an ongoing diary in images, short films; conversations between myself, foresters, our local community & beyond, detailing an example of how we are turning our small monoculture spruce plantation into an ecologically & economically, permanent real FOREST.
I am also interested in using film to convey personal stories of small backyard environmental actions in response to global ecological concerns. I am developing a personal, poetic narrative film-making style, that while documentary in certain aspects, allows a larger range of ideas and emotions to be presented, in contrast to standard nature documentaries.
My project 'the Holly Wood Diaries'has allowed me to create two experimental film sketches, 'burning bright' (08) and 'once i counted birds' (09) and builds on previous stories with beginner foresters and their young trees/new woodlands in the more traditionally styled documentary film 'the local project revisited', 2006
I also write about other eco-art works that inspire me & which may be inspire others.
rsa art & ecology blog Nils L. Elliot: Mediating Nature
