Marks from the land

A creative nature session using berries, plants and soil to make maps for our emotional histories map

Places and Traces is about exploring connections to the landscape we live in. It’s a community project taking place in Charnwood, Leicestershire. It’s part of my Cultures of Care project and is supported by Charnwood Geopark.

Last month we met in the woods to explore marks from the land and connect with nature in a very hands-on way.

We collected berries, moss and mud to use to create marks on paper. The idea was to look at the abundance of colour and texture in this landscape that we know and love. We talked about deep connection with the soil and the plants that grow here. We used hawthorn and blackberries to splat into paper and to paint with. We collected the local clay-rich red soil and tried drawing with the dry lumps and painting with water added. We used fresh walnuts to make marks from the blackening skins and tried out inks made from other berries. We used twigs to draw with and squashed flowers like fuchsia for their bright colours.

All the papers created will be used in the next stage of the project, creating a large-scale map of (part of) Charnwood Forest, telling the stories of the people who live and enjoy exploring here.

You can read about other sessions and the project as a whole here. There’s one more outdoor session to come, a walk on the edge of Loughborough on Friday 18th October, all welcome. Then we’ll head indoors in November for research days with maps and then in the new year we will be making our map with artist Hannah Moreton. Sign up and join us here.

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