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This page is best experienced with the FARMSCAPE: Four Seasons of Sounds soundscape playing in the background.
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Greening Chiddingly farmers and landowners have come together with an ambitious goal: to restore our local land and waterways to help address the climate and biodiversity crises. Farming like this requires courage, creative thinking and a long-term vision. Farmers today can be considered artists in their own right. Many are recreating a new pallet of colours, to give shades to the farmed landscape. FARMSCAPE is a collective of artworks that tell ecological stories and celebrate our nature restoration projects in Chiddingly. FARMSCAPE hopes to renew a sense of awe and care for Chiddingly’s rural landscape by giving a voice to the connoisseurship of farmers and the biodiversity they are restoring.
FARMSCAPE: Dada collage poetry
At the heart of FARMSCAPE is a creative arts project by Chiddingly farmers, landowners and their families that uses Dada inspired collaged poetry to share important stories about their hopes and fears for farming. This includes their own habitat restoration initiatives that will increase and enrich the biodiversity of the Sussex landscape. Chiddingly is considered by many to be the ‘home of British Surrealism’. It is fitting therefore that FARMSCAPE involved Dada collage poetry workshops to breath new life into a modern artistic expression of rural surrealism in Chiddingly.
Farmers and their families came together, with some trepidation, to reflect, cut and paste their way through newspapers, the Field Magazine, Farmers Weekly and Resurgence Magazine to create their collaged poems. They subconsciously gathered words, pictures and ideas to express their hopes and fears for their farms, the landscape, their grandchildren, their community and the world. Examples of their both beautiful and shocking poems can be seen below. It is hoped that with further funding the poems can be placed in the Chiddingly landscape for people to reflect on all year round.
Farmers and their families came together, with some trepidation, to reflect, cut and paste their way through newspapers, the Field Magazine, Farmers Weekly and Resurgence Magazine to create their collaged poems. They subconsciously gathered words, pictures and ideas to express their hopes and fears for their farms, the landscape, their grandchildren, their community and the world. Examples of their both beautiful and shocking poems can be seen below. It is hoped that with further funding the poems can be placed in the Chiddingly landscape for people to reflect on all year round.
Female farmers and their families take part in a Dada collaged poetry workship in Chiddingly. Image: Gail Giles.
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Chiddingly farmers and landowners at the start of a Dada collaged poetry workshop at the Gun Brewery Taproom in Chiddingly. Image: Gail Giles.
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Example of a Dada collaged poem created at a poetry workshop. Image: Gail Giles.
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Example of a Dada collaged poem created at a poetry workshop. Image: Gail Giles.
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Example of a Dada collaged poem created at a poetry workshop. Image: Gail Giles.
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Example of a Dada collaged poem created at a poetry workshop. Image: Gail Giles.
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Example of a Dada collaged poem created at a poetry workshop. Image: Gail Giles.
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FARMSCAPE: Four Seasons of Sounds
Following the Dada collaged poetry workshops, local artist and farmer Gail Giles combined the voices of Chiddingly farmers, landowners and their children reading their poetry with sounds from their farms to create a unique rural soundscape. Field recordings from the Chiddingly landscape included birdsong, rustling vegetation, bubbling streams, sheep shearing and combine harvesting. You can listen to FARMSCAPE: Four Seasons of Sounds using the audio player at the top of this page.
Recording birdsong at Hale Farm. Image: Gail Giles
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Recording sheep shearing at Hale Farm. Image: Gail Giles
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Recording combine harvesting at Willett's Field. Image: Gail Giles
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Sound recording in progress in Willett's Field. Image: Gail Giles
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FARMSCAPE at Artwave 2024
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The culmination of the FARMSCAPE project was an exhibition held at the Gun Brewery Taproom in Chiddingly as part of the 2024 Artwave Festival. At the heart of the exhibition were the Dada collaged poems created by Chiddingly farmers, landowners and their families, alongside works by local artists including Riga Forbes, Barbie Harrrison and Callista Giles. The exhibition was soundtracked by the "Four Seasons of Sounds" soundscape.
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Discussing Dada collaged poems by Chiddingly farmers in the Gun Brewery as part of Artwave Festival 2024. Image: Gail Giles.
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Admiring icons by local artist Barbie Harrrison in the Gun Brewery as part of Artwave Festival 2024. Image: Gail Giles.
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Viewing videos and stills by local artist Callista Giles in the Gun Brewery as part of Artwave Festival 2024. Image: Gail Giles.
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Riga Forbes exhibited her rich and detailed landscape paintings - her response to the fragility and temporality of the natural world she immerses herself within. The tiny silhouettes of endangered species, the jewelled beetle and the large blue butterfly, that Riga includes in her paintings highlight this fragility and her concern with the loss of habitat and species biodiversity in the local farmed landscape.
Barbie Harrison exhibited a new series of Icons, small but beautifully detailed works that capture fleeting moments of time in the life of plants, birds and animals, painted onto reclaimed wood. Barbie has painted, swifts, swallows, hares, lapwings, butterflies, marsh marigolds and nightingales, both celebrating these creatures and mourning their loss from the Chiddingly fields, meadows and woods. These species are among those that Greening Chiddingly Farmers have highlighted in their habitat restoration initiatives.
Callista Giles exhibited Meadow Mandalas and a video art piece, Flora. Based on hand painted botanical illustrations, she has reinterpreted these into bold playful contemporary graphic artwork. The wild flower species depicted in Callista’s work are important for our gut health and support the ecosystem, both as a food source for bees and other insects, and in enabling wild flower meadows to help alleviate flooding.
Barbie Harrison exhibited a new series of Icons, small but beautifully detailed works that capture fleeting moments of time in the life of plants, birds and animals, painted onto reclaimed wood. Barbie has painted, swifts, swallows, hares, lapwings, butterflies, marsh marigolds and nightingales, both celebrating these creatures and mourning their loss from the Chiddingly fields, meadows and woods. These species are among those that Greening Chiddingly Farmers have highlighted in their habitat restoration initiatives.
Callista Giles exhibited Meadow Mandalas and a video art piece, Flora. Based on hand painted botanical illustrations, she has reinterpreted these into bold playful contemporary graphic artwork. The wild flower species depicted in Callista’s work are important for our gut health and support the ecosystem, both as a food source for bees and other insects, and in enabling wild flower meadows to help alleviate flooding.
'Untouched' by Riga Forbes.
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'Swifts' by Barbie Harrrison.
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Still from 'Flora' by Callista Giles.