Wetland Park

14 ways to look at Scotland

This post comes to you from Ashden Directory

from The Bothy Project

from The Bothy Project

Wallace Heim writes: The Year of Natural Scotland, an initiative led by the Scottish government, connects the country’s natural diversity and its artistic life. Their economic incentive is to develop tourism and the events industries. The means to do this include 14 arts projects across every region of Scotland.

The projects, supported by Creative Scotland and Scottish Natural Heritage, will share £500,000 to create events, poetry, walks, films and installations that combine the country’s natural and cultural life.

An outline of the projects shows their geographic and artistic diversity. The longer list of organisations, groups and communities that are collaborating on each project shows the social reach of this economic programme.

  • NVA presents Island Drift, a lighting and photographic project on the islands of Loch Lomond.
  • Scotland’s Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, Argyll, the Borders and Dumfries & Galloway will develop writing and walking residencies.
  • Wide Open and Crichton Carbon Centre, Spring Fling and the Stove will present an International Environmental Arts Festival based on themes of land and energy.
  • Walking a Line by Dunbar North Light Arts is a year-long site-specific project of walking, marking and recording in the environment.
  • Sound Out@Seven Lochs will compose music and soundscapes for a new planned wetland park near Glasgow.
  • Smallpetitklein Dance Company will present an outdoor event with professional and non-professional dancers around the Tentsmuir Nature Reserve.
  • Tabula Rasa will bring together artists, environmentalists and people working on the River Tweed.
  • Tiny Geographies, by composer and television director Chris Dooks, will gather local stories and music for festivals in Aberdeenshire and Deeside.
  • For Natural Bennachie, three artists will work with scientists to celebrate the heritage of this north-eastern landmark.
  • My Place in the Natural World will involve young people in Aberdeen and creative digital media.
  • The Highland Print Studio and Cape Farewell will deliver the exhibition Sexy Peat celebrating the Lewis blanket bog.
  • Composers Inge Thomson and Lise Sinclair will create Da Fishing Hands, a project featuring song about Fair Isle’s fishing grounds and their changing and sustainable use.
  • Sweeny’s Bothy / Bothan Shuibhne is an off-grid retreat for artists, writers and the public, involving events, walks, residencies reflecting on wild nature and contemporary culture.
  • In addition to these projects, in the Autumn, the Year of Natural Scotland will host a major conference, ‘Reading the Landscape’ exploring the representation, mis-representation, imagining and re-imagining of nature in Scotland.

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

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Lillian Ball: Waterwash ABC

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Lillian Ball works in New York as an environmental artist and activist. She has a multidisciplinary background in anthropology, ethnographic film, and sculpture, which influences her work. Furthermore she has received numerous awards and has traveled widely due to her international exhibitions.

Her latest project Waterwash ABC includes the construction of a wetland park, improvement of habitat as well as increase of public access to Bronx River. Its aim is to filter storm runoff and create consciousness among the community for watershed issues by means of an aesthetic nature experience.  The need for restoration and revitalization of areas challenged by stormwater issues is widespread in waterfront areas worldwide.

The vision of Lilian Ball was a vegetated swale with native plants, permeable pavement, and educational signage explaining the need for non-point source stormwater management in private as well as public places.  The transformation of a neglected space into a public outreach park is supposed to inspire community commitment to stormwater issues.

The runoff from the parking lot and the roof of the ABC Carpet and Home retail facility at 1055 Bronx River Ave was emptied unfiltered into the Bronx River. Ball’s project aims to alter this fact. Rocking the Boat is the fiscal agent for this Bronx River Watershed Initiative in order to construct a wetland habitat that stabilizes the shoreline to detain and filter the outfalls before they enter the river.

Rocking the Boat students will plant a variety of salt-tolerant native species and help the  ABC personnel in planting the community vegetable garden and maintain the site. Above that a hydrologic monitoring will be carried out by Rocking the Boat environmental apprentices.

In that way the project creates a permanent, publicly visible remediation, habitat restoration, and educational site. Above that it acts as a green infrastructure model.
For more information see http://lillianball.com/waterwash/index.html and  www.rockingtheboat.org

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

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