Workshops

Engage with nature through art

The art-science workshops ‘Re-Imagining Hilbre’ involve a tactile, verbal, intuitive and imaginative approach to the understanding of the geomorphology of Hilbre Island.

Looking closely at the rock formations of the island and through the documentation of these using observational drawing, charcoal/pastel rubbings and creative writing, people are invited to connect with nature by allowing free associations to happen as well as opening up the creative dialogue between nature and humans.

At the end of the workshops there is a space for open discussion and the contribution to the deep mapping of Hilbre. This part of the workshop facilitates knowledge exchange (based on people’s experiences through creative engagement) and the sharing of ideas about what it means to connect to the landscape.
Read more about deep mapping at the bottom of this page.

 

Some snapshots of previous workshops

  • Rock rubbings

  • Observing the intricacies of the geomorphology

  • Recording the geomorphology during the event for Being Human Festival 2024

  • Art-Science data

  • Group discussion at the end of workshop

  • Deep mapping art-science data

What is deep mapping?

Deep mapping is an experimental way of recording and making visible what is usually overlooked within a landscape. Deep maps are not maps in a traditional cartographic sense but a way of connecting disparate thoughts/elements/ways of thinking through the use of different materials by both amateurs and professionals – the level of expertise in one particular area is irrelevant. Deep maps are focused on the land and the landscape; on the accountable layering of stories. These stories can be shaped by one person or many. There are no set rules.

Deep maps are unstable, fragile and temporary. They are a conversation and not a statement.

The act of deep mapping embraces the fragility of the landscape, allowing people to become unstable in the security of combined focus when the activity is performed as a group.

Deep mapping is described by Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks as attempting to “record and represent the grain and patina of place through juxtapositions and interpenetrations of the historical and the contemporary, the political and the poetic, the discursive and the sensual.” 

When observed through a spatial lens, landscape becomes a limitless container of knowledge; a site where material and immaterial remnants converge and coexist.