Fiona and Claire are hosting the People’s Art Exhibition with fellow nature lovers in Kirklees. The exhibition will be located in space provided by Huddersfield Temporary Contemporary on the Piazza in Huddersfield Town Centre from Monday 9th May – Saturday 14th May, 2022.
The exhibition is a collaborative research project between academic consumer researchers, local residents and artists which uses creative expression to showcase our experiences with nature in Kirklees. The aim of this multimedia (photographs, paintings, drawings, collages, etc) art exhibition is to:
· Share our experiences of being in nature;
· Acknowledge the benefits that spending time in nature can provide;
· Encourage a desire to seek out and discover local places and spaces to experience nature;
· Kindle emotional connections with nature, among visitors to the exhibition.
Why?
Melissa Harrison, an English novelist and nature writer, commented recently that people need to love the natural environment in order to think about caring for it. In order to preserve the planet for future generations it is imperative that contemporary consumer culture shifts radically into a new realm of understanding; one that reconnects humanity and the natural world through compassion, appreciation, and yes as Harrison suggests, love. Such a radical shift is vital if we are to achieve progress on important sustainable development goals; 12 – Responsible consumption, 13 – Climate action, 14 - Life under water and 15 - Life on land, thereby materially increasing the well-being and common good of consumers, societies and environments.
Such shifts in understanding are not going to occur overnight; however positive signs of hope can be seen in Birch’s (2020) research with young city dwellers in Sheffield in which even fleeting experiences with nature are described as being “social and relational...partners in a mutually caring relationship”. This resonates with Jo Kennedy’s recent art exhibition entitled ‘I am on my way to the sea’, hosted at the Dai Hall and supported by Creative Kirklees. This art exhibition chartered the relationship Jo formed with the River Colne through visual and audio pieces which captured the river’s “essence as a moving, living thing”, and how Jo came to understand “our wider relationship with it as a society”.
Taking inspiration from these various sources we envisage the People’s Art Exhibition to be a celebration of our mutually caring relationships with nature in Kirklees.
For more information visit https://drive.google.com/file/d/12qro7G3j28yMLCgG5qHgU36E_lb776-F/view