Artist and former architect Helen Stratford led Alterlives, our first ever Wild Learning event on 31 March 2018, focusing on the spaces and borders between the inhabited and uninhabited.
Helen used her 2017 residency at Sudborough Green Lodge as the basis for the workshop, which wove personal experience, art history, the current state of English woodland, and guided sensory experiences of Fermyn Woods itself into a day of thinking and creating for artists and writers.
Helen’s artistic practice is located between live art, visual art, architecture and writing. In analysing the rhythms of daily life she investigates how we can rethink the power of the built environment within social, political, economic and emotional infrastructures.
The Outdoor Institute of Art is an alternative art school conceived by Yasmin Canvin, with a curriculum which will consist of discussions, skills and knowledge sharing events between artists, experts in relevant fields, the arts sector and members of the public. With specific focus on artists using digital technology, artists working with Special Educational Needs students, a mentoring programme for early career artists, and a training programme for arts organisations to deliver outdoor education workshops.
The Outdoor Institute of Art will be delivered across 6 terms over 2 years, through a series of modules:
Wild Sharing workshops – a creative and social opportunity for informal skill and knowledge sharing.
Wild Learning workshops – conceptually led training session and activities for artists working outdoors.
Free Exchange discussions – discussions between an artist and an expert, exploring connections between art and the everyday.
Artist Talks – talks held at and led by the current artist in residence at Fineshade Wood.