In Our Element Willow
WILLOW is an 'In Our Element' programme of celebratory work that responds to one of the key species in the Water Park.
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How can you improve a cold dark February evening in the Cotswold Water Park ?
Simple - hold a stunning Willow Lantern Pageant !
Hundreds of people took part in this second lantern pageant, with bats, ducks, beavers, fish, woolly mammoth and dinosaurs glowing in the night sky and reflecting in the still waters of the lake. Youth groups, community groups and schools from Swindon, Cirencester and the Water Park area have been involved in artist-led workshops, and all of them came along to take part in the procession accompaannied by local drummers and musicians.
Before the lanterns were constructed, the groups, led by the artists, studied the wildlife of the Cotswold Water Park in detail, carefully picking out important features such as the feathers on the back of this merganzer head.
The artists were Helen Lomberg, Susan Early, Norah Kennedy , Dominic Thomas, James York Moore and Tim Graves. The original inspiration for the Willow Lantern Pageant came from John Charles Kimberley 'In Our Elements''s Community Artist. Thanks to them and especially to Johno for all their huge inspiration and hard work.
Studying the detail of a merganzer
Click on the thumbnails below for full size image
WILLOW and the WILLOW LANTERN PAGEANT 2010
In response to popular acclaim and public requests the Cotswold Water Park Society is organising the second Water Park Willow Lantern Pageant. It will take place to celebrate the movement of winter moves into spring, and Aquarius moves into Pisces – an appropriately watery symbol – at a new venue, Pochard Lakes, near South Cerney on 19th February 2009.
The Willow Lantern Pageant brings together artists, and the special flexible qualities of willow to work with community groups and schools, and especially young people who may not otherwise have the opportunity to work creatively in this way. The Willow Lantern Workshops inform about the wildlife, history, geology and economy of the CWP, encouraging people to study and observe that ecology so that they can create wonderful original lantern images that will celebrate a special landscape in our pageant in February.
In 2010 the Pageant will be bigger and better. We have successfully fundraised from ASLF and Big Lottery Awards for All, so that we can engage with more communities, groups and schools. We are happy to be working again in partnership with Gloucestershire Youth Service and New Brewery Arts.
We will also be working with the same experienced team of professional artists whose inspiration facilitates fabulous willow lanterns of water park wildlife. Led by John Charles Kimberley, In Our Element’s Community Artist, the artist team consists of James York Moore, Susan Early, Tim Greaves, Norah Kennedy, Helen Lomberg and Dominic Thomas.
In Our Element 'WILLOW'
The willow tree has been worked, managed and nurtured by communities in the Cotswold Water Park for hundreds of years, and as such is an iconic and familiar image in this watery landscape.
Willow and Wildlife
The bark of the willow tree yields salicylic acid, the basis of aspirin. Until their local extinction in the nineteenth century, beavers ate the bark, they were then hunted in part for the accumulation of this mild anaesthetic in their glands. The pollarded willow makes perfect habitat for many species of bat, butterfly, birds and insects, including the Noctule bat. Willow is a key indicator species for the health of the biodiversity of the Cotswold Water Park.
Willow and Weaving
Willow supports many human endeavours. It still supports employment in basket making, hedge laying and hurdle making, and is making a remarkable comeback with the need for coppiced wood for renewable energy. It is threatened by lack of management and, in some varieties, by disease such as willow scab.
Willow is also a wonderful medium for artists. Artists are using willow, not only for basket making, but for sculpture, shelters, and daily inventing new ways of working with this versatile and potentially expressive material. Patrick Dougherty, the renowned willow artist from the USA talks of 'drawing with sticks' that give you a feeling of the natural world and it is something that 'everyone can do'.
In our Element's programme of WILLOW
The programme is all about a re-enchantment of art, involving people, making direct contact with nature, using local materials efficiently and creatively, bringing head and heart together as part of the healing of the world.
In Our Element fundraises for each WILLOW project, with funds being allocated in the past from Arts Council England, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Gloucestershire County Council, and Natural England through the Aggregrates Sustainability Levy Fund.
Each year In Our Element adds to a collection of willow work for the Water Park - some are temporary projects as is our inspired WILLOW Lantern Pageant, and will last a short time, yet all are artist imagined, collectively created, original and site specific.
Notes: WILLOW has a number of powerful cultural associations. The willow was seen as a tree of celebration in biblical and also in European rural traditions - strip the willow is an exciting and joyful dance. In wetland areas WILLOW is a tree that is often taken for granted or associated with mourning (for example Burne Jones Death of Ophelia ) – it needs to be celebrated. In Our Element is reviving celebratory, creative and community qualities associated with WILLOW. In past years In Our Element has brought to the CWP artists like Patrick Dougherty building original willow architecture with community groups, Laura Ellen Bacon adorning the largest willow tree in the CWP with Swarming Form, and John Charles Kimberly inspiring community projects through living willow sculptures such as Biodome.
In Our Element WILLOW projects
Take a look at some of the fantastic WILLOW projects which have been completed over the past three years - In Our Element Willow projects - or better still, why not go and visit them?
Collect a Cotswold Water Park Access Map from the Gateway Centre or download one off the website, and set off to look for the following:
Keynes Twist by Patrick Dougherty - located at Lake 31, Cotswold Country Park
Biodome by Johno Charles Kimberley - located at Lake 12, Lakeside car park and recreation area
Swarming Form by Lauren Ellen Bacon - located along Sustrans Route 45, near Cerney Wick Bridge
