About us

Please email CLarkins@uclan.ac.uk with your commitments in response to the key messages videos you see.

Can you help make environments more accessible? Will you listen to people locally and enable their access?

We will feedback your commitments to participants. 

Who we are

The exhibition combines outputs from two related projects, led by The University of Central Lancashire and Edgehill University, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

‘From the Land to the Sky’ is the culmination of collaborations, in 2021 and 2022, between selected artists and people from multiple local communities. In a variety of outdoor settings they connected with nature and produced art conveying meanings of landscape through multiple perspectives and senses. Their messages to decision makers are reflected throughout this site. 

About the projects 

Connecting disadvantaged young people with landscape through arts 

(Prof Candice Satchwell is lead academic for connecting disadvantaged young people project).

This project was led by academics at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) who belong to The Centre for Children and Young People’s Participation. The views of marginalised groups, and particularly young people, are often disregarded in decision-making about land-use and landscape. So, we helped children and young people to visit natural outdoor environments close to where they live – but where they seldom went. Thinking about those outdoor spaces, the artists worked with the groups to document their experiences in a whole range of exciting ways – resulting in the exhibits here. We all hope that their work will help you to think about young people’s perspectives on connecting with nature – how to understand nature’s workings; how to create more opportunities to be in and with nature; and how natural environments might be made more accessible to all children and young people.

Multisensory multispecies storytelling to engage disadvantaged groups in changing landscape 

(Prof Claire Parkinson is the lead academic for the multisensory multispecies project).

This project was led by academics from the Centre for Human Animal Studies (CfHAS) at Edge Hill University with colleagues from the University of Central Lancashire. Decisions about landscapes are usually made from a human perspective but what happens when we think about those spaces and places from the point of view of another being: an animal, a plant or a tree? We used multispecies storytelling to capture the voices of marginalised communities and disadvantaged groups; those who don’t usually have a say in decisions about landscapes and landscape use. To explore a variety of different ways of making sense of the world we invited artists to work with groups and communities to develop their responses to a variety of locations and spaces. Workshops took place at a farm, at different nature reserves, and on an allotment. Work in this exhibition is the result of imagining what it means to share natural environments with other fauna and flora. 

Artists 

Katie Anderson, The Belthorn Collective, Elle Bulger, Rachel Capovila, Lou Chapelle, Claire Dean, Sue Flowers, Austin Mitchel-Hewitt, Maddi Nicholson. 

Partners and participants 

Art Gene, Aspired Futures, Belthorn Primary School, Burscough Community Farm, The Chapel, Furness Academy, Furness College, Grundy Art Gallery, Learning Stars, Martin Mere Wetland Centre, Natural England, Royal Cross School, Rusland Horizons Trust. 

Project Teams 

Deb Crook (UCLan), Lara Herring (Edge Hill University), Cath Larkins (UCLan), Brett Mills (Edge Hill University), Hannah Parathian (Edge Hill University), Claire Parkinson (Edge Hill University), Candice Satchwell (UCLan), Donna Thomas (UCLan). 

Funding 

Both projects were funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as part of the UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) ‘Landscape Decisions’ funding programme. 

Thanks 

With thanks to all those who took part in, worked on, and supported the projects. Special thanks to Nick Brooks, Marion Brown, Ian Brownbill, Linda Brunt, Jo Crotty, Mike Downey, Victoria Foster, Jenny Griggs, Bev Hennefer, Neil Hickson, Jenny Holden-Wilde, Sofia Parveen. 

For information about the projects please contact: 

Claire Parkinson (Multisensory multispecies storytelling to engage disadvantaged groups in changing landscape) claire.parkinson@edgehill.ac.uk 

Candice Satchwell (Connecting disadvantaged young people with landscape through arts) CSatchwell@uclan.ac.uk.