Soil Culture Forum

Falmouth University, 2-5 July 2014

soil culture forum poster and logo; dirt dialogues poster for WCSS 2014 (p ward 2014)

The first major event of the Soil Culture[i] programme organized by CCANW[ii] and RANE[iii] at Falmouth University took place over the last week. The event brought together talks, workshops, social gatherings and exhibitions of artwork and posters from local and international artists, soil scientists and agriculturalists to celebrate and investigate how the arts may contribute to shifts in attitudes and understanding of a matter we take very much for granted – soil.

woodlane campus library display (with francesca owen) and work in group show, falmouth (p ward 2014)

painting with earth workshop at soil culture forum, falmouth (p ward 2014)

My own contribution included the forum logo, a small display of soil inspired work with Francesca Owen in the Woodlane Campus Library, a poster commissioned and printed for the 20^th World Congress of Soil Science in South Korea by Alex Toland[iv], a Painting with Earth workshop and a number of art works in a pop-up exhibition on site. It was good to meet, hear and see the rich and varied work of those of like minds and inspirations, and especially to hear the no-nonsense common sense of Graham Harvey, author of one of my favourite books, The Carbon Fields[v]…

“Why, she wondered, were Indian peasants being pushed into debt and penury by a system of agriculture that was supposed to bring prosperity to rural communities? And why did monocultures, which were intrinsically of low productivity, come to be accepted as highly productive though they required huge inputs of chemicals and fossil fuels, and then produced less food than traditional, diverse farming systems?” from The Carbon Fields by Graham Harvey, p.100

“Organic milk, for example, is a blend of the good and not so good.  Organic standards require that at least 60 per cent of the ratio must be in the form of grass and forage.  In terms of its nutrient content, milk produced to this minimum standard won’t compare in quality with milk of cows getting 80 per cent of their feed in the form of grazed pasture, organic or not.  And, as on conventional farms, milk produced to higher standards will be diluted with milk produced to the bare minimum standard.” from The Carbon Fields by Graham Harvey, p.136

a simple prayer for the earth, participatory painting with earth pigments, falmouth and westward ho! (p ward 2014)

soil circle for soil culture forum, falmouth (p ward 2014)

It is always exciting how participation in such events can provide the space to create new work and to make and renew contacts. Let’s hope that the forum will lead to increased future awareness, projects and collaborations towards our need for changes in attitude and policy around issues of our care and relationship with soil, a living substance upon which our and all life depends. Also thank you to Daro Montag for all his hard work organizing and raising funds[vi] for this event.

© P Ward 2014

[i] http://soilculture.wordpress.com/

[ii] http://www.ccanw.co.uk/

[iii] http://rane.falmouth.ac.uk/

[iv] http://soilarts.wordpress.com/2014/05/27/dirt-dialogues-an-integrated-arts-program-at-the-20th-wcss/

[v]THE CARBON FIELDS – GRAHAM HARVEY (Bridgewater UK; GRASSROOTS; 2008)

[vi] Funding for the Forum was provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)