The Far Orchard

Project description

The first seeds for The Far Orchard started to grow during the Covid-19 pandemic. Robbie Coleman and Jo Hodges live in a rural village in Dumfries and Galloway, and during the pandemic informal networks of care developed. This way of sharing locally inspired them to think of ways that creative practice could encourage these kinds of networks beyond the pandemic. One of the key concepts that developed alongside the project was the idea of degrowth in a world that demands more and more. Hodges and Coleman were keen to think of creative ways of questioning the systems that lead to us wanting more and more.

‘To grow apples, you must wait – it takes time before a sapling will bear fruit. The project offers a chance to have a conversation about our expectations for and demand for everything immediately. You need to be patient and develop a relationship with your tree. The Far Orchard is an opportunity to connect with natural systems and each other and move toward re-engagement with more ecologically healthy systems and local food production.’

Jo Hodges

The Far Orchard connects living systems, food and community by rethinking the traditional way of growing an apple orchard. Instead of planting all the trees together, The Far Orchard distributes apple trees across Banchory and the surrounding area. Citizens and organisations are invited to take part by hosting and caring for an individual tree. Together the trees form a network that creates a community and deepens relationships with, and understanding of, the natural world. Each year people come together in a collective harvest at Plenty? A Festival Exploring More and Less to share and to get inspired by different ways of living through creative activities.

The Far Orchard is an example of how a community project that embodies system change thinking can develop. People care for an individual tree but are connected to a wider community. The project encourages a deeper understanding of natural systems such as pollination, and opens space for a conversation about alternatives to the current systems that humans have constructed.

Time and process

‘The time frame of the project was not as simple as generating financial resources for a commission – it was about seasonality in nature and how this actually determines our time frames for when and how projects happen. This is a strategy that The Barn as an organisation is increasingly using.’

Rachel Grant

The Barn put out an open call for tree hosts in January 2021 with an initial 100 trees offered for free. As part of the project, hosts would be invited to participate in pruning workshops, shared harvests and creative activities and events that explored relationships with the natural world. 93 people responded immediately and local organisations such as schools were invited and many agreed to host a tree. Applicants were allocated a species and size of tree that matched the type of space they were going to plant their tree in.

‘You can’t just stick an apple tree in the ground anywhere, you have to really think about where it’s going to go and make sure that it’s the right variety of tree in the right place.’

Jo Hodges

The Far Orchard held a ‘Planting Day’ in April 2022 where hosts were invited to collect their tree and planting instructions, meet Andrew Lear the apple tree expert, brand a tree tag, add to a map of tree locations and meet other hosts. Around 100 new apple trees were planted in April 2022 and people are still able to join The Far Orchard with an existing tree. A monthly e-newsletter is sent to all hosts with two or three events during the year such as pruning workshops as well as the Plenty? festival. The Far Orchard has a website with an interactive map of the locations of all the trees.

Plenty? A Festival Exploring More and Less

At its heart, The Far Orchard is about creating community and connecting people to nature and environmental issues. Participants are invited to be a part of The Far Orchard community and to also connect with The Barn and with local organisations working with related issues such as food and climate. Each year Plenty? A Festival Exploring More and Less is planned to take place to bring The Far Orchard hosts and wider public together in a harvest celebration, and to explore new ideas around how we might live more sustainably.

The festival took place for the first time over two days in October 2022. The festival is a reimagining of a traditional harvest festival; an opportunity to take part in the sharing of an abundant apple harvest, while at the same time exploring contemporary ideas of what having ‘enough’ might mean. Plenty? uses creativity to explore the world around us and aims to innovate ways of shaping a more sustainable future. Key to this is exploring how we might live with less, build community and share in times of abundance.

‘Plenty? is about communities coming together to share abundance through harvests, but there is also the opportunity to have a conversation about the possibility that we may need to live with “less” and what that means, individually, for communities, and as societies.’

Robbie Coleman, artist

During the 2022 festival, The Barn’s indoor and outdoor spaces became a place for visitors, artists and performers. It provided varied forms of encounters for audiences through art, music, hands-on activities, physical theatre and intergenerational storytelling. Local environmental organisations participated, including Newburgh Worms and Deeside Climate Action Network. Other communities in Aberdeenshire, including GREC (Grampian Regional Equality Council) and Homestart were also invited.

Much of the 2022 programme provided a space for reflection on issues that affect the local area, such as just transition, with presentations by the Centre for Human Ecology and a collaborative talk by researchers, artists and activists involved in transition justice in Aberdeen.

‘When there is an invitation to imagine more liveable futures – the questions of politics, of the current limitations of systems thinking, of “who” gets to imagine and decide futures needed to be centralised within the festival and will continue to be in the future programme.’

Rachel Grant, Assistant Producer at the Barn

Some of the other activities included film screenings in the solar powered Moving Images Caravan, a Communities Tent where people could get involved in apple pressing and juicing and try out a bicycle powered smoothie maker. There was also the opportunity to take part in foraging tours and explore participatory art installations and demonstrations across the site.

Sustainability issues

The Far Orchard is a long-term project with outcomes that will happen gradually over a period of 25 years, and its activities and aims will change over time. So far it has led to:

• Developed participation: Over 100 individuals, families and organisations have connected through The Far Orchard project, and the programme of workshops and tree planting is ongoing.
• Created community beyond the usual cultural audience: The Far Orchard with the Plenty? festival allowed for the inclusion of a wider community than The Barn’s usual culturally interested audience to schools and families in the area.
• Provoked transformative ideas: The project has started a conversation within the wider community about co-creating in the context of the climate emergency. Exploration of ideas during Plenty? has opened up new ways of thinking and has provided an alternative to the current pursuit of economic growth at the expense of ecological systems and happiness.

• Inspired new networks: The project has inspired Aberdeen Community Council and other places to set up similar networked orchards. Hodges and Coleman are working on a protocol so that other places can implement similar systems of growing and community.
• Encouraged tree planting and developed skills in growing.
• Developed interdisciplinary thinking: The project facilitated cross-fertilisation of knowledge between a broad range of artists, researchers and organisations.

‘The Far Orchard rethinks how we might connect living systems, food and community.’

Robbie Coleman

Lessons, tips and advice

Including the wider community

The Barn sometimes finds it challenging to run activities outwith its own buildings. The Far Orchard with Plenty? allowed for further exploration and the opportunity to include a wider community. By inviting people and organisations to participate by hosting an apple tree, it engaged a broad range of families, schools and institutions and managed to go beyond the usual culturally interested audience at The Barn.

‘One of the questions we have for next year’s planning is how to build communities and economies around Plenty?‘

Rachel Grant

Making collaborations work

Making collaborations work between artists, a cultural organisation and the local community is far from easy. What made it work in this case, according to Hodges and Coleman, was that The Barn was open to new ideas of how to respond to the ecological crisis and to taking a risk. Both The Barn and the artists involved were willing to go on a shared journey. Everyone was open to discussion and trust developed during the process.

‘We’re not coming in as experts. We’re exploring ideas together with The Barn. It is an opportunity to work in different ways and take different roles, rather than an artist coming in, making something and leaving. Instead, it becomes an ongoing process of developing relationships.’

Robbie Coleman

Ecological benefits of creative thinking

Bringing in artists to ecological work creates a space for imagination that doesn’t exist in the same way in politics and research institutions. Artists Hodges and Coleman have shown that through their creative practice they could open imaginations for how to use The Barn in a different way, how to rethink growing and community, and therefore make a space for new possibilities of reimagining the world. However, working with the cultural institutions that can enable those spaces to challenge the status quo can be a bit of a challenge.

‘As artists we contribute to rethinking systems. Rethinking what is taken for granted, such as the idea of an orchard being all the trees in one place. If you can open people up to seeing the world differently, from there you can explore other ideas.’

Jo Hodges

Unlike traditional exhibitions, there is not one creative outlet of The Far Orchard. It is subtler than that – the creativity is woven into the whole project. Bringing together creative and ecological thinking with the space and audiences of The Barn and inviting people to come together in new ways.

Partners and stakeholders

The Barn – a multi arts centre

The Barn is located half an hour from Aberdeen, in the countryside of Deeside, between Crathes Castle and Banchory. The area has witnessed significant social and cultural transformations in the region from agriculture to the fossil fuel industries in the 1970s, to current concerns with environmental change and a just transition.

Recently The Barn has transitioned from a receiving arts venue to a centre for learning, debate and experimentation to support active citizenship and care. As a multi-arts organisation, The Barn works at the intersection of different forms and disciplines connecting, for example, growers, activists and local inhabitants with artists and scientists. It is creating conditions for artistic practices to influence the way communities address change.

‘The Barn is this living site, an ecology. It is not just a building.’

Rachel Grant

Commissioned artists Jo Hodges and Robbie Coleman

Jo Hodges has a background in human ecology with a particular interest in social justice and environmental justice. Over time, she has increasingly discovered how working creatively with these issues allows for rethinking of the structures and practices that harm humans and ecosystems.

Robbie Coleman has a background in sculpture and creative events. His interests are in how ideas work in the public space and in devising new strategies for approaching public participation.

Fruit tree expert Andrew Lear

Andrew Lear runs the Blackhaugh Community Farm, a green family business rooted in Perthshire, Scotland. He specialises in grafting and pruning apple trees suitable for Scottish conditions and passes on orchard expertise by running classes in skills like planting, pruning, budding and fruit identification, and also provides consultancy to new or existing orchard owners or community groups. The Far Orchard purchased 80 apple trees from Andrew Lear and sourced the balance of 20 trees from Springfield Nurseries in Dunecht and Neil Clapperton in Pitmedden.

100 tree hosts: individuals, families and organisations in Banchory and Aberdeenshire

The Far Orchard hosts include those with private gardens, allotment holders, schools and care homes. The majority of hosts were supplied with a tree to plant, but some joined the network with existing trees they owned. New hosts with existing trees continue to be added to the network and project.

More than human species – pollinating insects

‘The Far Orchard responds to biodiversity loss by creating this network of apple trees across communities, which is about human communities, but it’s also about a network of pollinators.’

Rachel Grant

Funding

The Far Orchard is funded by The Barn, which is a Regular Funded Organisation through Creative Scotland, as well as other grants, trusts and foundations. The Barn does not currently receive regular funding from its local authority, but generates its own income via ‘FOLD’ workshop and retail space, weddings and private hires, ‘flock’ a contemporary curated craft fair and by hosting regular fundraisers. There is also a Friends of The Barn scheme and they receive donations from members of the public.

The rural context of The Barn means there are limitations for how income can be generated. To be able to function, the organisation operates as a mixed model supported by public funding.

‘Success is that The Far Orchard has its own momentum and develops as a network that doesn’t rely on The Barn. It’s all about building relationships and connections.’

Robbie Coleman

Relevant links

• The Far Orchard interactive map
• Sanctuary Lab