The team behind this project included:
Creative Producer: Cara McAleese
Dramaturgy & Direction: Malaika Cunningham
Story lead: Joseph Houlders
Sound Designer & Composer: Lee Affen
Spatial Designer: Kate Morton
Lighting & Projection: Will Monks
Animations: Aaron Howell
Community Producer: Sally Proctor
Community Events Producers: Saada Osman & Valentine Nlebedim
Production Manager: Jen Watts
Permaculture lead: Aimée Georgiou Lormand
Performers: Sam Holland & Zoe Katsilerou
Musicians: Jocelyn Allsopp, Emily Compton, Will Shaw, Tom Rigby & Chris Burge
With many many thanks to Darnall Allotment, Darnall Wellbeing, Kinder Kalsi, Grace Darbyshire, Emily Thew, Anoushka Bonwick, the CRT Team at Victoria Quays, Open Social Kitchen, many other wonderful facilitators, and all our incredible volunteers.
Between 2019 – 2022 The Bare Project led a largescale project along the Sheffield-Tinsley canal exploring plant folklore. They led storytelling, music, craft, and animation workshops with people of all ages; foraging walks along the towpaths; and worked with local community producers to put on dance, music, and food events. This work culminated in September 2022 with a large-scale carnivalesque event called The Light Tree Celebrations (see film below), complete with film screening, dancing, performances, and a big ol’ feast.
The canal is an industrial, green, lush, polluted, strange, and beautiful place in Sheffield. Like many things at the edges, it is fruitful, but often forgotten.
Along its towpaths there are hundreds of species of edible, magical, and medicinal plants. Like the communities which border this space, these plants come from all over the world – some were brought as crops, others by mistake as stowaways on barges, or as flowers to be planted in the gardens of the wealthy.
We believe that there are great storytelling opportunities to be discovered in plants and our relationships with them. They can tell stories of great journeys, mythical heroes, or great healing. This guided both the form and content of this project, and all this work was designed around the permaculture principles of:
- Observe and interact: it is important to know what is around us before we seek to add to it or change it. This is as true in gardens as it is within communities. To create this work we have sought to listen, look, and ask questions as a key part of our design.
- Catch & store energy: there is a lot of energy in nature and communities – what is growing well? How can you support this? With this guiding principle, we hope that this project will help to build local capacity after our own time along the waterways has ended.
- Value the edges and the marginal: we aim to celebrate the spaces in between us, as sites to gather, create, and build connections. They are exciting places for biodiversity, as well as stories.
- Use and value diversity: this edgeland space, this ‘hinterlands’ is rich and diverse in terms of both plants, animals, and people. From using and valuing this diversity, we are all much richer,
This worked formed part of a national project is called Into The Hinterlands, a national arts programme delivered by the Canal and River Trust in collaboration with regional partners, promoting wellbeing and connecting communities, with participatory events along three remote rural, urban and suburban waterways: Pontymoile, Sheffield and Enfield & Tottenham.
This project was also made possible with support from:
Arts Council England, The Talbot Trusts, and the Darnall Area Trust Fund
Between 2019 – 2022 The Bare Project led a largescale project along the Sheffield-Tinsley canal exploring plant folklore. They led storytelling, music, craft, and animation workshops with people of all ages; foraging walks along the towpaths; and worked with local community producers to put on dance, music, and food events. This work culminated in September 2022 with a large-scale carnivalesque event called The Light Tree Celebrations (see film below), complete with film screening, dancing, performances, and a big ol’ feast.
The canal is an industrial, green, lush, polluted, strange, and beautiful place in Sheffield. Like many things at the edges, it is fruitful, but often forgotten.
Along its towpaths there are hundreds of species of edible, magical, and medicinal plants. Like the communities which border this space, these plants come from all over the world – some were brought as crops, others by mistake as stowaways on barges, or as flowers to be planted in the gardens of the wealthy.
We believe that there are great storytelling opportunities to be discovered in plants and our relationships with them. They can tell stories of great journeys, mythical heroes, or great healing. This guided both the form and content of this project, and all this work was designed around the permaculture principles of:
- Observe and interact: it is important to know what is around us before we seek to add to it or change it. This is as true in gardens as it is within communities. To create this work we have sought to listen, look, and ask questions as a key part of our design.
- Catch & store energy: there is a lot of energy in nature and communities – what is growing well? How can you support this? With this guiding principle, we hope that this project will help to build local capacity after our own time along the waterways has ended.
- Value the edges and the marginal: we aim to celebrate the spaces in between us, as sites to gather, create, and build connections. They are exciting places for biodiversity, as well as stories.
- Use and value diversity: this edgeland space, this ‘hinterlands’ is rich and diverse in terms of both plants, animals, and people. From using and valuing this diversity, we are all much richer,
This worked formed part of a national project is called Into The Hinterlands, a national arts programme delivered by the Canal and River Trust in collaboration with regional partners, promoting wellbeing and connecting communities, with participatory events along three remote rural, urban and suburban waterways: Pontymoile, Sheffield and Enfield & Tottenham.
This project was also made possible with support from:
Arts Council England, The Talbot Trusts, and the Darnall Area Trust Fund
The team behind this project included:
Creative Producer: Cara McAleese
Dramaturgy & Direction: Malaika Cunningham
Story lead: Joseph Houlders
Sound Designer & Composer: Lee Affen
Spatial Designer: Kate Morton
Lighting & Projection: Will Monks
Animations: Aaron Howell
Community Producer: Sally Proctor
Community Events Producers: Saada Osman & Valentine Nlebedim
Production Manager: Jen Watts
Permaculture lead: Aimée Georgiou Lormand
Performers: Sam Holland & Zoe Katsilerou
Musicians: Jocelyn Allsopp, Emily Compton, Will Shaw, Tom Rigby & Chris Burge
With many many thanks to Darnall Allotment, Darnall Wellbeing, Kinder Kalsi, Grace Darbyshire, Emily Thew, Anoushka Bonwick, the CRT Team at Victoria Quays, Open Social Kitchen, many other wonderful facilitators, and all our incredible volunteers.