Text by Bryan
English Romanticism, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Ruskin all spring to mind when wandering like a cloud through the hills of the English Lake District. But you are rarely lonely here and such inspiring scenery creates a place of mass tourism to the tune of 14 million visitors a year! This is clearly a big industry and the local economic reason d’etre, and as such it doesn’t come without its problems for the local inhabitants. Despite appreciating the stimulating landscape of the Lakes, it is important as an artist (or thinking person) to get a better understanding of how your own visit can add to the gradual paralysing of rural places into a mono economic existence, stifling diversity and fracturing village communities.
Grizedale Arts might be described as an organisation that is particularly interested in how art can be useful/ provocational within these problem areas. It works with artists to raise awareness alongside the local communities, with an understanding of, but detachment to, the outstanding romantic beauty of the landscape. It organises artist’s residencies, local projects and fetes, public sculptures (see the Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane’s Greasy Pole post – 20 January) and international exhibitions.
The art organisation embraces the weirdness of contemporary art, contradiction and conflict as part of its lot, and the list of artists it has worked with reads like a summary of subsequent Turner, Beck’s futures, Tate triennial shortlists. It operates a kind of ‘home and an away’ program, bringing critical distance from international artists to the area, drawing links between the urban and the rural projects as well as working in similar economic or social situations in other countries such as Japan and China.
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/665958[/vimeo]
Adam and Karen’s cats – Tomas and Morris, photo by Karen Guthrie.
General Notes:
Grizedale Arts is also becoming a working farm. It has just started its own ad-hoc farmyard radio show, broadcast live between 4 and 5pm live from its temporary office building on the hill above lake Coniston. You can listen to it here.
The arts organisation is undergoing a £1.2 million new building, Lawson Park, inside a 13th century ex-monastic charcoal burners hovel. The new building is designed by Sterling prize-winning Sutherland Hussey Architects.
Their latest project is a web TV station called agrifashionista.
Carbon Offsetting our road trip
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/664431[/vimeo]
We asked the arty boffins at Grizedale if we could attempt to carbon offset the Wonderful North at their art farm, to try and find out for ourselves what this phenomenon actually entails. We worked out that we needed to plant at least 3.2 trees to carbon offset 1.1 tonnes of co2 that the motor home will omit for the 1500 miles of our trip. Plus a lot of hedging to deal with the food miles, extra unpredicted mileage, and the carbon footprint of the preparation and planning/ computers etc. Three artists, ourselves and the staff of Grizedale spent the day rotivating, digging a trench and planting.
After this experiment, I can’t help but think that the neat and incredibly cheap carbon offset packages that one can buy for a flight to New York (about £5) or for 4 years driving in your car can’t really be dealing with the whole picture and the labor it takes to plant the trees (it took 9 people a day to plant a relevant number for our short motor home trip). Then there are costs for tending to the said trees and the chance that they might die, blow over etc within the necessary 20 year life cycle. Finally when the trees die, rot or burn they put the carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere?
Anyhow if you would like Grizedale Arts to offset your art world jet set lifestyle, huge museum heating bill, or over production of art invitation flyers then give them a ring. At least you’ll be putting that money back into art, and can visit and see the actual trees yourself over the next 20 years, you can even dig the hole they go in if you want.
Breakfast at Lawson Park with Grizedale Arts – Adam, Alistair, Lisa and artists Karen Guthrie, Ruth Hoflich, Maria Benjamin, Jay Yung, Bryan and Laura, who have come to help plant trees.
This is all great. Can it be put together in some sort of book (with some of the photographs) so that we can replicate Bryan and Laura’s journey, visiting and checking out the art and architecture they have brought to our attention.
The fact that the journey has been taken and recorded in real time makes it all the more exciting.