TREES

 it was nice speaking to Johan yesterday he has a strange calming effect on me.  I'm enjoying the tree project and having the two strands of doing something a bit arty as an intervention Point de Caption quilting point and doing something practical like making a documentary carves out a little space for me. I was a bit sad you didn't listen when I suggested we went to Betty Kennys tree. I think you thought I was joking or talking nonsense but I think a few pilgrimages to specific trees of note would be good for us - it would as Sarah Trueman says queer the trail.  I was taken by the story of Artuads s taff of Jesus and the st Patrick that he tried to return to Ireland and started thinking about sticks and staffs and how once they are in the hand they are more human than treelike.  The project in the school seems to be evolving, I really like the idea of thinking about growth and time and planting.  I want to push for some large dead tree trunks to be delivered...

  Talking to the children on Wednesday prompted the question what are trees for? The children started with Blossom then Food then Mangoes.  They also talked about seeing the cranes over Manchester stop the trees being planted.  One of the things they saw is that trees are connected to what we eat and how we are as humans - they are more than just oxygen.  This made me think about the human and the non-human and how trees are connected to humans in different ways. They are part of the landscape both imagined and real. 

 I eventually got the stump out of the ground over Christmas, it was not easy. apparently it was one of two large blackthorn trees that used to sit on the boundary of our garden. There was a thought for the day on radio 4 this morning I only caught the end of it but it seemed to be about tree planting.  The speaker said that in both the Jewish and the Muslim faith there is a reference to  trees.  If you are busy planting and you hear that the messiah is coming you must finish the job before going to see them.  I liked the idea that tree planting is important and is future orientated, it made me think about our project and young people and priorities.  Planting trees especially slower growing ones such as oak and beech  is an investment in time and care that is both real and symbolic.  It also requires levels of optimism and resilience that will be really necessary for the future. Perhaps this could be what our film is about and what we aim to capt...

It was fun going into the school today. A lot went on, and the children were very self-directed and independent, working without much direction to explore what trees meant to them.  There were a couple of moments when I realised film would have been good. There was one moment when one of the children was describing the roots of the tree and her hands waved together to enact the roots. The wave action was really interesting.  Another was when the same child used her hands to describe the way in which trees moved in and out of windows in London. The urban tree was evoked through her hand actions.  This made me see how film could capture small, embodied moments within tree experiences, that audio could not capture.  Guess where this is?  

 It was interesting reading t he book about Forest schools.  It made me go back to the Principles.  What comes through is a focus on structure and the relationship between structure and agency, within the Forest school paradigm. The focus is very much on practitioners I think what worries me about it is the focus that we developed on the Odd project on what is happening around the edges. New materialism and the idea of 'thinking like a tree' is also not really mentioned.  Forest Schools seems to be about the practices. We are going to think about the things that could happen, the research creation, the speculative work.  Wo what should we do on our project that is different? We will focus on what children do and how they can make art with, and in, woodlands.  We will focus on children and trees as a unit of thinking, using new materialism.  We will bring together disciplines (including art) to create a differently weighted set of practices.  That ...

  I have always liked tree rings and been slightly fascinated by the way they mark time.   There is a 1300 year old slice of s equoia in the natural history museum .  I just tried to find a picture of it but it has been restored and they have moved the timeline that used to be written on it in tippex to a side panel.  This made me feel a little sad as I used to love the way the dates were written onto the actual tree. An inscription rather than a museum label.  I'm not sure a timeline next to it will do the same thing, it will not read like a calendar. Perhaps they have decided it is more an artifact in its own rite now and needs interpreting from the side.  If I had any say in the matter which luckily I don't I would ask them to carve the dates of events in deep. From a more global perspective, I'm tempted to go and have a look at what part of their interpretation of the past they have chosen to erase.  Will the invention of the steam engine be ...