I didn’t choose the land, the land chose me
Last year, Andy Franzkowiak was awarded an Outreach Fund grant to support the work of Coed Gwenllian. Through their project their aim is to engage the general public in soil research and reforestation. He shared with us his passions and hopes for the project and the challenges faced throughout the past year.
The recently titled Coed Gwenllian (Gwenllian Forest) is a landscape that is the epitome of change. This is a community interest company that brings together a diverse group of individuals that share an interest in shaping the future of our rural landscape. It is a fascinating site, filled with stories that are at the core of our relationship with nature and how we are approaching the ecological crises of our time. It is not yet a forest, this, for us, is an idea, a hope, a change for the near future.
We are a new team, made up of farmers, artists, and scientists, with a long-term aim to open the site up to the question of how we might renew our relationship with nature. Pre-Covid we had developed a relationship with the Sustainable Places Research Institute at Cardiff University, and several of the MA students had carried out research across the site for us to start to understand the stories contained in the soil – the foundations of our story. How healthy is the soil? What impact has heavy industry and hundreds of years of deforestation had on the depth and chemical makeup of the soil? How might we look to the impact of future changes that would bring about healthy soil for all parts of the ecosystem.
Alongside opening ourselves up to research, we want to bring the local community into our hopes for the future of Coed Gwenllian. This journey is one for everyone to participate and see the changes for the future generated by a multitude of hands. Public engagement in the transformation of the landscape and the research is fundamental to everyone feeling part of this change – or this is our hope.
We wanted to bring groups of local community participants into the research being carried out by the team from Cardiff and with that we wanted to collaborate with a local artist to support the workshops and elaborate on the story being told through this project, creating an installation from the collaboration and the community group that would go to galleries in Swansea and Cardiff.
Then Covid struck, our site, being home to people shielding, was unable to carry out our original project and, with incredible understanding and support from the RSC team, we shifted our project online.
Ami Marsden, our infinitely patient and quietly powerful artist, shifted the focus of her community engagement to spending time with local groups asking them about the stories they remember of the land. Combining this with the stories held by the soil, revealed by the researchers, David and Josh, our collaborators developed a beautiful collection of research and imagery that made a statement as to the voices and complexity held within one small valley, and how this echoes across land and society.
What we discovered is the simple act of existing with a landscape generates huge, humbled respect for it in those Ami interviewed. The soil research gave the community groups an insight to the ground beneath them and a comprehension of the historic changes over decades.
So much of these types of projects are about storytelling and having a space for these stories and relationships to flourish. The most beautiful ideas we encountered were from local people who expressed that they are merely custodians of the land and it is there to share with those who would take care of it.
The resulting online exhibition of work and Instagram campaign allowed for all collaborators to place their research, whether artistic or scientific, alongside each other, and gave the chance for the local nature of the story to shine alongside the big picture themes we are discussing through the wider interdisciplinary project that is Coed Gwenllian.
We would like to say a big thank you to all who stuck with us through this project, and particularly the team at Cardiff and Ami, who have been not just good collaborators but passionate wonderful people with whom to begin the journey of Coed Gwenllian. We would like to thank the community participants that created the personality of the project and helped elaborate on how fundamental science research and chemistry is to wider societal stories.
The funding from the RSC has been invaluable to bringing the community to life for Coed Gwenllian, and our second public engagement project is now just commencing and runs from the research and outcomes this initial project brought about. Next is an interdisciplinary project with an ethnobotanist and artist Ami Marsden, in which we explore the knowledge and impact of supposed weeds and invasive species.
As society opens up post this pandemic, we hope our site can be a passionate beacon for interdisciplinary collaboration and for all-comers to spend time with the ways our landscapes will change this century, and that in some of these changes will be a joy to find yourself a participant.
To explore more about this project please go to their website, or the Instagram page @coedgwenllian.