Radar is collaborating with MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, on a workshop-led programme exploring the social and cultural value of trees. Exploring the emotional connections people develop with trees and woodlands which contributes to, and emerges from, a rich body of myths, folklore and other symbolic associations in contemporary and traditional culture, an artist will be commissioned to lead a programme of five creative workshops which will inform a temporary display in the gallery’s Project Space. It is anticipated that the sessions will explore some of the existing cultural associations with Milton Keynes’ urban treescapes and offer points of departure to posit new ones.

 

The programme connects to the Branching Out research project based at Loughborough University, Open University and University of York, which aims to account for the symbolic, heritage, spiritual, social, and cultural values of treescapes. The project identifies that there is not a developed method for accounting for the social and cultural value of trees within the systems used by planners. Researchers will be working with citizens and stakeholders to develop a holistic value framework, using co-production and storytelling research methods to capture meanings and values associated with past, present and future trees. This data will form the basis of new maps which offer a new way to look at Milton Keynes' treescapes, revealing the social and cultural values which residents ascribe to the landscape.

 

This project is funded by the MK Community Foundation

We currently have an open call for artists to lead the project. For more details please read our brief linked below.