We are thrilled that artists commissioned through Nature Calling, the National Landscapes Association’s first national arts project are continuing to get the recognition they deserve for the incredible pieces they co-created with communities in and around National Landscapes.

Consequences longlisted for prestigious Artist Prize from a field of 3800

Becca Gill has been longlisted for the Artist Prize for her incredible piece ‘Consequences’, commissioned by Dorset National Landscape and produced by our national arts partners Activate Performing Arts. This is incredible and well-earned recognition for the many hands that helped to create a monumental creature to stand alongside the iconic Cerne Abbas Giant. There were over 3,800 submissions for the Artist Prize, and the longlist was decided by more than 80 curators, artistic directors and artists.

We are so proud of what Becca and the Radical Ritual team (Sita Brahmachari, Grace Emily Manning, Nick Hayes and Douglas Dare) created with the input of neurodiverse teenagers from Fairmead School and Yeovil College SEN department, who created the head; asylum seekers and refugees via Yeovil Together who shaped the heart; adults with learning disabilities from Lufton College and Able2Achieve, who crafted the legs; and, primary school children from Birchfield Primary School, who made the feet.

Consequences is about belonging, about reconnecting people with a landscape they didn’t identify as their own. All essential to support nature’s recovery and to ensure more people can benefit from a sense of belonging in beautiful natural spaces. 

Are You Lost? comes to Glasgow

As part of the Sonica Glasgow festival of audiovisual art and experimental music, you can experience Rob St John’s Are You Lost? commissioned by Forest of Bowland National Landscape and produced by Lancaster Arts. 

The festival runs until 4 October and you can visit the installation at Glasgow Tramway. 

Are You Lost? was co-created by Rob and people and community groups from around the Forest of Bowland National Landscape together. He held discussions, choir singing sessions, nest- and lens-making workshops and coordinated memory mapping, engaging over 1000 – mainly young – people, all coming together to generate an incredible, immersive soundscape, words, film and textiles. 

The Tramway show is a two-for-one on National Landscapes too! Gait Barrows National Nature Reserve in Arnside & Silverdale National Landscape features in Rob’s Lagg installation, which is running alongside Are You Lost? at the same venue. 

Lagg is an experimental radio play and sound installation ‘voiced’ by the more-than-human elements of these landscapes. Built from field recordings made in rock, earth, water, peat and moss – using geophones and hydrophones to listen beneath the surface – the piece is narrated through a series of non-human landscape ‘characters’: slate, limestone, water, moss, pollen, yew, ostracod and gunpowder.