Memory Cairns

[oreed]

Can you help?
I am looking for organizations or wildlife groups to become involved in an arts project that links location/species/community/memory.

I am an artist and Lecturer who is looking to work with local communities to help bring awareness of the fragility of our planet to a wider audience through sculpture and drawing.

The Project:
I am looking for areas, wildlife and/or community groups around the UK that have known species or sub-species that are either extinct or on the red data list. With their support I intend to develop a sculpture based on that species and its location. This sculpture shall then be entombed in stone and burnt, producing a smoking cairn. This will produce charcoal from which shall be used to create a series of drawings made by a local community.

This project will need funding and once I have identified key areas around the UK I shall the apply for UK funding to bring this project to fruition. Please visit the websites below for more information.

thanks,
Oliver

www.memorycairns.org.uk

[eeyore]

No offence but

a) i can think of better ways of supporting red data species - like spending the funding on supporting their habitat.

b) there is enough junk, signs, info boards and who knows what else in the countryside allready without adding random stone cairns

c) You will be lucky to make charcoal burning in a stone cairn anway - charcoal burns have to be carefully moderated and the average cairn isnt air tight, plus usually they are carefully arranged billeted wood one big piece of sculture isnt going to produce artist grade charcoal (its also hazardous as some kinds of rock explode when hot - trad charcoal burns usually use clay)

d) I'm all for taking art into the community but why not just take some charcoal (which you can buy from local coppice products) and do the art, perhaps basing the art on the local species, your costs would then be minimal and thus more attractive to funders.

Sorry to be negative, but ive worked in funding before and its a very difficult market at the moment and i have serious doubts that you will achieve funding for the project as it stands.

[thunder]

Why create a sculpture just to burn it? Seems very negative to me.

henrya

[oreed]

Thank you for your reply.

Yes your comments do appear negative but there has been support for the concept of the project already and I hope this will grow.

The aims of the project is to bring together a community awareness through the visual arts of their own local ecology, introducing children and the wider community as a whole to the work (that is probably) already being carried out by their local community wildlife action groups. By focusing upon the extinct or endangered brings a heightened awareness to the fragility of a local ecology to a community. The knock on maybe that they support their local wildlife groups greater.

I have already produced charcoal through this process, the idea is not to produce large scale charcoal burners but small stone kilns producing a very small amount of charcoal.

The intension is to take the work to the local community at to base the work around a known species. There is not definitive extinction list and this project aims to support the work that the memoproject.org is currently developing in Portland, UK.

Thanks again.

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by oreed

Thank you for your reply.

Yes your comments do appear negative but there has been support for the concept of the project already and I hope this will grow.

The aims of the project is to bring together a community awareness through the visual arts of their own local ecology, introducing children and the wider community as a whole to the work (that is probably) already being carried out by their local community wildlife action groups. By focusing upon the extinct or endangered brings a heightened awareness to the fragility of a local ecology to a community. The knock on maybe that they support their local wildlife groups greater.

But how does creating a sculpture and then setting fire to it aid this process ? Wildlife action groups, trusts etc are already pretty good at engaging the community , but the key is to produce something lomg lasting not to create an ephemeral effect - as I said above funding is limited at the moment and local action groups would be better served by using it to build ponds, create wildflower meadows etc etc

Originally Posted by oreed

]I have already produced charcoal through this process, the idea is not to produce large scale charcoal burners but small stone kilns producing a very small amount of charcoal.

but again the question is why ? , i doubt the children will attach any greater significance to the charcoal from the sculpture than they would to any other drawing material , so why not source the drawing charcoal from a local green wood project thus teaching the children about sustainability and woodland mgnt- I think it is particularly poor that you are using balsa which isnt even an indigenous uk wood - have you not considered that the import of tropical woods, and indeed the embodied energy of transport and thus climate change are two of the moving causes in the extinction process.

Originally Posted by oreed

The intension is to take the work to the local community at to base the work around a known species. There is not definitive extinction list and this project aims to support the work that the memoproject.org is currently developing in Portland, UK.

actually there is a definitive extinctions list as maintained by IUCN , the same body that deals with the red and amber listings. Could you clarify what your relationship with the memo project is ? do they know about your project ? approve it, support it ? etc - The Memo idea of creating a permanent scuptures of extinct species and having a bell tolled for them is an interesting one and could be an interesting awareness raising news story.

But I'm afraid i fail to see the link to making sculptures out of imported materials and wastefully setting fire to them - taking art into the community and basing it arround the local species is a great idea but imho the wasteful precursor does not.

[oreed]

Thank you, and thanks for viewing my website and yes in principle, the project has had support through email contact with Memo.

Although in previous projects I have used balsa this would not be used in this particular project.

Anyway it's good to hear views of the project and again thanks for taking the time to respond.

[oreed]

Can I just stress that I am not looking for funding from any kind of wildlife group - the funding will hopefully come from UK arts councils as this is primarily an arts project, in which I have chosen to explore extinct species.

[eeyore]

Fair enough - I just get iritated when i see lottery or public cash going to ephmeral projects just because they are "art" when it is so hard to get money to make a real difference.

For example I remember when i was working in milton keynes the art council made a £10K grant for a piece of "art" where a bus drove round and round the grid road system with people on board reciting poetry , until it eventually ran out of fuel - and had to be towed off the grid at public expense and great inconvenience to all in the area - aparently this was a "paradigm of the modern life experience" and thus worthy of funding

at the same time I was trying to get money to plant a wildflower meadow and create a story time circle for local schools to use in one of the parks , and to use the work to train disadvantaged young people in country side skills but no funders wanted to know because it wasnt "cutting edge enough" - Eventually we did the project from internal resources and several people , me included putting their own hands in their pockets and/ or working free.

Now okay i dont expect the arts council to fund environmental projects , but the problem is higher up than that with how public money is allocated - with the examples above it doesnt take a rocket scientist to work out which one was of greater benefit to the local comunity and thus imo more deserving of funding.

and also I'm from the school of thought where art is art , paintings, drawing, permanent sculpture, theatre etc - a bunch of pretentious folk driving about on a bus reciting poetry to each other doesnt cut it imo

[valleyforge]

Oliver,

As normally fervent supporters of 'conceptual art' we initially decided to support your project ... so we wrote you out a big cheque, wrapped it tightly around a stick ... to signify just how tight money is these days, you understand ... and buried it within a small cairn of a carefully selected variety of rocks arranged in a tall loose pile with inherent unstable equilibrium (again subtle references here to the present state of global monetary systems) ... we then tried to set fire to it, but initial resistance to ignition was met (which we interpreted as significant of nature's resistance to change) ... so an accelerant (paraffin) was used to signify just how mankind has ultimate power to defeat the ends of nature, whenever and however it suits.

As it happens, the significant donation to your project just disappeared in a wee puff of smoke ... and as for the charcoal ... well hardly enough for you to draw your own conclusions as to what we really think of your daft idea.

Sorry about that ... guess you'll just need to hold out for that arts council grant then.

[JeffH]

I'm sorry Oliver but I'm afraid I can't help feeling that your project has little or no conservation value

Jeff
(Schedule 1 Licence holder for Avocets, Kingfishers and Barn Owls)