My Charnwood local history and landscape project moves indoors this month
In October we had the last of the walks and wild workshops outside for Places & Traces. We took a short ramble along the bridleway, the old road, on the very edge of Loughborough. It’s one of my favourite places to walk and it was lovely to share this with the group and see it through new eyes and hear stories from people who know it better than me, and for longer.
We talked about hedges and the feeling of being contained within protective hedges. We talked about the growth of the town and the houses reaching into the countryside, and this path being a boundary between the two. We looked at old hedges and talked about the changes in the way local people use the paths and the field edges.
We talked about walking with all our senses, noticing the bird song, the crackle or squelch beneath our feed, the scents of autumn fruit and manure, the wind on our skin.
Now the season has turned, we move indoors. The November and December sessions are at Loughborough Library in partnership with the Local Studies Collection. We will be looking at maps and other documents about the area we are focussing on and starting to collect stories, locations, places of interest to add to our own map of the emotional histories of this part of Charnwood Forest. For this next stage, we are working with artist Hannah Moreton who will be creating the map with participants in workshops in the new year.
The map and a collection of written stories, will be exhibited in Charnwood Arts in May 2025. You can still join the group if you would like to be part of this project. Sign up here.
Other blog posts about this project
Places & Traces of Charnwood Forest
Places & Traces is a creative landscape history project looking at how local people experience and feel about the Charnwood Forest area. Over the next year I’m hosting creative exploratory walks and wild workshops where we will explore what makes this area so special to us personally. I’m collecting community stories and experiences of this…
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…
Memory Maps
What do remember about special places you have visited? What can you remember of your time spent there? What features or experiences stick in your memory? These memory maps of Charnwood Forest were created during my first Places & Traces event at the Outwoods, Loughborough in June. We talked about our different relationships with this…
Walking the earth
Reflections from Places & Traces August walk Places and Traces is about exploring connections to the landscape we live in. In early August the project took to the footpaths near Woodhouse Eaves in the heart of Charnwood Forest. I lead a short walk through village edges, fields and farm tracks with the invitation to think…
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Ruth Singer 
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