Common Ground – Frames of Reference

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Returning home from a family gathering in the North West we took a detour from our usual route, and despite the dark clouds and pouring rain and the warnings of queuing traffic and closed roads we found our way over the Pennines to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It was our first visit and it was long overdue. The way was slow and wet and windy, but as we approached the sky cleared and by the time we left the sun was shining again. And in between the park was a revelation. Continue reading “Yorkshire Sculpture Park”

Log Book

During our visit to Lincoln Cathedral we witnessed an elegant performance commemorating the 800th anniversary of the 1217 Charter of the Forest. Logs of Scots pine were transformed into wooden beams by a group of hewers in the cathedral’s Chapter House, in a spectacular ritual lasting ten days that explored the dramatic, acoustic, material and olfactory qualities of the space. Continue reading “Log Book”

Andy Goldsworthy Cards

Bracken stalks laid on water amongst alders
Scaur Glen, Dumfriesshire, 6 March 1990

Continue reading “Andy Goldsworthy Cards”

Apple Day

The tradition of Apple Day began on 21 October 1990 when the charity Common Ground took over the Piazza at Covent Garden in London with a demonstration to celebrate the cultural importance of the apple, as an enduring symbol of diversity and local distinctiveness. It coincided with an exhibition of specially commissioned photographs of West Country Orchards by James Ravilious. Over the last 25 years Apple Day has become a popular festival, celebrated across the country in schools and museums, village halls and the Houses of Parliament. Continue reading “Apple Day”

14 Postcards

A series of postcards produced by Common Ground to accompany England In Particular, ‘a celebration of the common place, the local, the vernacular and the distinctive’. Continue reading “14 Postcards”

Elizabethan Oaks

Hatfield Park in Hertfordshire (not to be confused with its namesake Hatfield Forest in Essex) is home to an extraordinary number of venerable old oak trees, many of them believed to be over 1200 years old. A walk around the park might be described as a tour of the Stations of the Oak. Continue reading “Elizabethan Oaks”

For James Ravilious

This is a short trailer for James Ravilious: A World In Photographs, a film by Hugh and Anson Hartford, originally shown on BBC Four and now available from Banyak Films. The first time I saw his photographs was in the early 1980s at an exhibition by Common Ground called Second Nature at the London Ecology Centre in Covent Garden. I came away with a beautiful photograph of sheep in the shade of an oak tree, In The Heat Of May, just one of 80,000 photographs he took of rural life in North Devon for the Beaford Archive between 1972 and 1999. He was the son of artist and designer Eric Ravilious, and he was a self-taught photographer. Read more at the James Ravilious website.

Holloway

One of the many highlights of our recent trip to Cornwall was one that I took with me. Just a couple of days before we left London I received a copy of Holloway, a book by Robert Macfarlane, Stanley Donwood & Dan Richards. I kept it unopened in its Jiffy bag with Dan’s handwritten label and best wishes until we arrived, so that it became a part of our holiday. Inside, when I finally opened it, was a beautifully printed and illustrated book that told of the search for an ancient Dorset holloway, previously visited by Macfarlane with Roger Deakin. They were looking for the hide where the hero of Geoffrey Household’s novel Rogue Male went to ground. I’m not sure which I knew first, Household’s book or the film with Peter O’Toole. The abiding feeling was not so much of threat but of the safe harbour to be found beneath trees. Continue reading “Holloway”