harmony
About the project
harmony (between people and nature), residency, 28 september – 10 october 2000
‘To read the landscape like a book, as well as to enjoy it as a picture, opens the way to a new relationship between men and their environment. The health of the landscape, its appearance and men’s response to it are interdependent.’
A two week residency as part of a term long project with Inverie Primary, a single teacher school in Knoydart. The project was designed in collaboration with Eilidh Klemm, the then head teacher of the school, and was in response to the community’s recent purchase of the Knoydart Estate and inspired by two objectives of the newly formed Knoydart Foundation:
‘encourage land use in harmony with the environment’;
‘to conserve the land and natural character of Knoydart’.
In a series of movement, poetry and art sessions, I guided the pupils towards the creation of an abstract image, woven from local recycled materials. The image expressed their feelings about their environment in Knoydart. The residency culminated in an installation in the village hall, which members of the community helped to create. There was also an opening night, which most of the village attended.
‘harmony’ was made possible through Scotland’s Year of the Artist millennium programme and supported by the Scottish Arts Council, National Lottery Fund and the New Millennium Experience Company Scotland.
photographs copyright Peter Aldington, Pitt Klemm and Eilidh Klemm
Images
