Our First Event
Each month the community host visitors who come and stay with the community
and offer their time and energy to helping with big jobs that the community
need to do. The community offer in exchange somewhere to stay, meals and
the experience of living a sustainable life style and teaching any skills
that are needed to complete the tasks.
While we were staying at the woods the community hosted one such weekend
on the 1st and 2nd of November. There were 5 visitors that weekend who
all joined in and helped with such tasks as carrying a coil of black hydro
pipe up the steep hill to the settlement area from the car park and marking
sapling oaks in the woodland.
Natasha and I thought this would be a very good opportunity to experiment
and test out some of our ideas for our woodland walk event as we had a
'captive' audience. Dan was also doing a wild food foray that day so we
combined the two agendas and took the visitors for a walk on the route.
We hadn't prepared lots of different activities for the group which involved
improvisation or theatre games that involved being very physical and outgoing
as we were aware that this might make people feel very self conscious
and inhibited. So we decided to keep the walk very simple and be spontaneous
and sensitive to the place, letting it tell us what to do.
We used the constant points that we had been looking at as a starting
point and way of structuring the walk. So at each constant point we would
ask the group to respond to it by writing automatically for 45 seconds
what they saw, felt and thought while being there and sensing the space.
Natasha and I took on different roles as we went on the walk. Natasha
came up with different approaches to presenting the texts to one another
using her experience and skills acquired from college through devising
performances. She asked the group to project their voices directing them
to the tall trees above that they had written their texts about. Another
technique was to split the group into two, one half would say their text
to the other half of the group while they listened and then swap over.
Creating an orchestra of text and voices floating through the place the
texts had been inspired from. I took on the role of care taker and facilitator
using my skills and experience from working with adults with learning
disabilities in a theatre context. I was aware when people began to feel
cold after staying so still at each constant point which weren't very
far apart so I suggested that we say the text as we hopped along or spoke
the text like a conversation while walking along in order to warm up.
Our two different roles complemented each other and in collaboration with
Dan's wild food foray it was a successful balance of participation and
finding out about the site for both the visitor and for us. We had achieved
our objective which was to explore the possibilities for a performance
event and had enriched the experience of the context for both visitor
and residents. Community member Pete commented that he had noticed things
that he hadn't noticed before during his 3 years living in the woods.
We did feel however that we had missed the opportunity to record the performance
of the texts with the minidisk recorder we had. Natasha had said that
this was what she wanted to do but I contested and said that it would
inhibit the group. This is probably a good example of the process of consensus
not working in a collaboration of two. We in the future should make individual
decisions and take responsibility for them. Easier said than done when
we are concerned with being inclusive and sensitive to other peoples wishes.
Luckily we didn't miss the opportunity to collect some of the texts that
the group wrote and have compiled them for presentation here, next to
a picture of the constant point. 
Constant
One:
Drippy grotto, leaves
Deep, revealed,
Wet
Verdancy
Soft damp
Leaf strewn
Fairy place
Dripping, endless time, being here now.
Sense of place. Lovely sound of
windy drips coming down rock
Beauty of
water drops against dark rock
Constant Two:
Wind rustled leaves
Drooping catkins
It's gonna rain soon,
the psychedelic, skyscrapers pregnant,
bursting
Sunrays wispy branches
shadows, yellow glow, the
seeds hanging keys life'
Circles
Light falling on leaves, rain shower
Constant Three:
Matted crossing lives,
Bundled under straw, cities
of leaves and decaying mother
piled up, dry and cracking
wet and fertile.
Men of sticks wilt
autumnal gold
orange and yellow
Decay following on from human activity
Sticks Jess chewing one of them
dead wood brush pile
Autumn
Constant Four:
I've never noticed this before,
and I fell gratitude,
beauty and awe.
Green velvet grows and
clings soft and moist
Bunch of trees moss on stones
Jess eating dead wood
Deep, warm
Constant Five:
A hole
Surprise
Where do you lead to?
hole, holy, wholesome, wholeness under rock, in
earth, down deep below
Just by the path there's this
hole and it seems to go under
the tree, borrowed, probably,
by rabbits and there's
roots and rocks and
some moss round it
too and ivy.
Whatever it was that burrowed here.
Home, warm, retreat, peeing, fury animal
Constant Six:
Leaves plates of leaves
like the earth from the sky,
shifting, rotting, decay.
Golden beech
Needles galore
Take me to your
heart
May I lie I your
bed
Many colours shapes diversity
barking mad
Colours, warm, soothing
caressing, peace
Constant Seven:
Turning circle drifting in the sky, dancing wild
Eastward Ho!
Elevated beings
A long way up
Shuck by the wind
Silhouettes and needles
Form a frame for
the changing sky
to pass
Window through the trees
Frame in light filled with insects
Circle of freedom, air, space, time
picture
Curtains of life willowing in
the wind, barricade, buffed alive
Constant Eight:
Wet paper green leaves Canadian victors
falling crumbs, binding saw, felling license
Soggy wet
hardness
coated with needles
you were a tree
once
Strangled by
decaying
ivy
It's a twisty rooty, tendrilled
decaying trunk of larch
and has snaky twisted
clinging
broken
woven
limbs and members
Gnarled wood old dead
wood fire wood larch is it?
Constant Nine:
The fern in the rain on a hill on a piece
of paper in my head too wet
Tendrils
caressed by air
Yielding with
integrity and acceptance
Spots of rain and
a basket of
bracken
lines of
rain
the basket
bends
Fern in the rain storm blowing
bending in the wind
Constant Ten:
Curvy bendy
brand new dead
cracking golden
red.
Hold me tight
I want you for
my burner
Claw
Tree of life and death, rooting
and branching out, living, dying, rebirth
Constant Eleven:
Spiral galaxies,
nodes of power
wood, spraying out, away
Twisting, turning, burrowing to
returning to earth, a life
cut short.
Woodland Walk Performance Event
Link
to poster and press cutting
We have put together a collage of audience members maps and post event
feedback to represent the journey of the woodland walk event held on the
29th and 30th of November 2003 at Steward Community Woodland.
The text has been taken from an e-mail written by Dave for his daughter
Chloe.
After a rainy morning, we arrived at the Steward Community Wood in the
afternoon. Chloe was not sure what to expect and was a little scared when
Dave told her about the compost toilet there and that someone had dreadlocks.
But she knew her dad was mad so came along anyway.
When we arrived, we met the people who lived there and also the other
visitors who had come for a walk in the woods. There was Pete and Cheryll,
Dan, Merlin and Becki (and their little boy Rowan), some other visitors,
and Birch and Jessie the dogs. Chloe was a little scared of birch because
he wanted to play all the time.
First thing we had to do was to tell everyone our names and get to meet
people. Dave was happy to be there because he had already visited before
and stayed in a bender.
So, the two people giving the walk ( Natasha and Eve) gave us all maps.
The only problem was that the maps were blank and we had to make our own
up. The first thing that they did was to make a door for us to walk through
and then we could start our walk in the woods.
The growing area
First place to look at was the growing area where they grow the vegetables.
In the middle of the area was a pond, made in the shape of a Yin Yang.
We had to make sure that Rowan didn't fall in the water because he liked
falling over in puddles.
Everything in this area was grown in circles.
The Art place
This looked like some junk collected together but Natasha and Eve had
made it into a special art work. They got the pieces out of skips that
other people had thrown things in.
Finding a special gift.
We went walking along the path, then we stopped and were asked to look
for something special near the path. Some people chose leaves, some chose
pine cones, some got stones, all sorts of things.
When we had found it, we then chose some leaves and wrapped it up.
Then we gave our present to someone else with all our love. And then opened
the present that they had given us. Dave had a small piece of wood, and
Chloe had a small stone.
The shopping list
We walked along the path then climbed up a steep bit of hill. Next we
stopped and had to make a "shopping list" of all the things
we could see. Such things as trees, people, dogs, leaves, stinging nettles
and some others as well:
Then we had to split into groups, group A and group B. First group A had
to shout out the shopping list, all at the same time, again and again.
Then it was the turn of Group B. Dave was in group A and Chloe was in
group B.
Close your eyes time
After that steep hill we walked along a flat piece until we came to some
logs where we could sit down and relax. Because it had been raining, they
were wet, so Pete took his poncho and put it down for us to sit on.
The next thing we had to do was to take a piece of paper from Eve and
to close our eyes and pretend that we were there. Some people got different
places, Dan got the police station. Chloe got a supermarket….. and
Dave got a dog house.
After we had "gone" there and could see everything, the colour,
the noise, the people, what it was like, we then came back and opened
our eyes and looked around the woods. So we could see how different it
was.
We walked along the path and then told each other about where we had gone.
Chloe had gone to a supermarket and it was very bright with lots of lights
and lots of shelves and lots of people. They all had trolleys with lots
of food and things in there. The place had a roof as well. Many people
were stressed because they didn't like shopping.
But Dave had a small dark wooden place to go into and it smelt all doggie
because it was a dog kennel. He didn't stay there long because they dog
came back and wanted his home.
We both said that we liked it in the woods better.
The poem
We stopped again, and Eve told us a poem that she had written about the
woods. While she was doing this she was picking up small sticks.
Dear Mrs Deer
Near there we stopped again and Natasha showed us where they had found
their first woodland family. A family of badgers lived there, so they
had written them a letter and sent it to them. We could do the same if
we wanted to. Dave wrote to Mr Rabbit who lived in the woods, just to
say hello and to hope that Mrs Rabbit was looking forward to having another
baby. Chloe wrote to Mrs Deer to say hello. Dear oh deer oh dear.
The Glade
Then we went down the slope and to the glade. This was a flat piece of
land where we had to be careful not to step in dog poo. Here there were
boxes with things inside. Chloe found a frog. Dave saw some large logs
like the ones he had cut up last time he was there.
Now it was starting to rain a little bit so we all put our coats on and
Chloe put up her frog umbrella.
Wishing leaves
We walked back along the path again and every time we wanted to make a
wish, we picked up a leaf and wrote the wish on it with our inside eyes.
Some people had lots of leaves, some people had only a few. Chloe had
two.
We walked along to the big old beech tree at the end of the woods, and
made a circle. We then threw our leaves and our wishes into the air and
asked for them all to come true.
After doing this Chloe wished that she didn't have those sticky burrs
in her hair!
Food
Once this was done, we came back to the bender nearby and had something
to eat. Dan was heating water with his Storm Kettle, and the others were
making a bonfire. Chloe was helping get some wood to pass to the people
doing the fire.
We had fruit juice and tea, pieces of pineapple cake, dried pineapple,
tomato soup and Chloe had a slice of mango… all to herself!! She
didn't want to share it with Dave because he'd had lots of mango in India,
and also it was too nice to share!
Home.
It was getting late and Chloe had a party to go to in the evening, so
we had to say goodbye. We were a little sad to leave because they were
all nice people. On the way back she asked Dave lots of questions about
the place, and about making wishes. If Dave went to live there she would
like to visit but "dad, you know I can't drive a car, I'm only five".
Here is a map of where we went. We started at the start, went through
the circle garden, stopped to give each other presents, went to do the
shopping list, on to the logs where Chloe "went" to a supermarket,
wrote the letter to the deer, down to the glade, and back to the path,
picking up the wish leaves. Standing in a circle, then back to the bender
for tea and mango.
