Artist collective announce 'wonderment' project

The group "take art as a broad subject - including hedge laying and cooking"

A project aiming to connect landscape, food and farming with community creativity is open to visitors.

The Growing Places project will welcome ten resident artists to the grounds of a large Gingerbread House in Stroud from September to January 2025.

Created by artist collective Walking the Land, each artist will be working on their own project while also providing a workshop for the wider community.

Project team member Andy Freeman said one of the project strands is about "wonderment and closeness with nature".

The collective is inviting community groups, schools and young people from around the area to get involved in the workshops.

The project aims to support and promote a number of farmers and landowners, such as Stroud Community Agriculture and Oakbrook Community Farm, by using art to engage people with their "good practice".

"We're taking art as a broad subject - it includes hedge laying and cooking, as well as lots of things to do with drawing," Mr Freeman said.

"It's about three things - being closer to nature, reflecting on where our food comes from and doing it through being creative."

Artist Bart Sabel looks and Tara Downs are focusing on mycelium in their workshops

Two of the artist residents accepted to share their work at The Gingerbread House are Tara Downs and Bart Sabel.

Their current work focuses on mycelium - which Ms Downs describes as "the underground part of mushrooms" - a whole network of thin fungal strands called hyphae.

"They appear in ecology in such a way that we’re only beginning to understand," Mr Sabel said. “We’ve picked up all these bits everywhere, put them under the microscope, had a good look and showed them to other people and did some other experiments to let them grow.

He added: “They’ve now become these abstract paintings in a way that changing and still developing – every day it’s different."

Tara Downs said it was "lovely" to delve into their chosen world with the project

The pair have been carrying out workshops with secondary schools who were "queuing up" to look through the microscope.

Ms Downs said: “The role of artists – we get so enthused in a subject, we want to find a way to share the joy and the inspiration and new knowledge and what’s going on in the community.

“I hope that by the different workshops that the artists are doing, the things that we’re opening up in this lovely space with people, is getting people inspired to learn more."