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Reflecting on: extractive and regenerative land use

24 October 2024: Artists, environmentalists and land practitioners gathered at Gracefield Arts Centre to explore the challenges facing land use in Dumfries and Galloway.

Land use provocations

The afternoon started with three provocations on the varied pressures facing land use in Scotland and creative methods that deliver positive futures.

Ted Leeming, Glenkens-based photographer, shared his exploration of generational land use change through a series of immersive bike rides across Scotland. Starting in May this year, Ted cycled through Scotland’s varied landscapes: from the Glensanda super quarry to the blanket bogs of Forsinard and the outer isles. He explained that this slow travel enabled a richer connection with land, grounded in multisensory experience: smelling the land, tasting the air and feeling the wind.

‘As I slowly transitioned through various landscapes and land management practices, I was struck by an overwhelming realisation that our lands and seas have become profoundly commoditised and commercialised. Siloed and simplified. And yet, amidst these dominant extractive approaches that deliver for today at the expense of tomorrow and the more-than-human world [definition: a world comprising a diversity of interrelated humans and nonhumans, eg rocks, plants, water], there are glimmers of hope.’

Ted Leeming

Ted’s presentation ended with words evoking the land use he witnessed whilst cycling through Scotland: ‘impoverished, dominioned, glimmers’. Prior to the workshop he invited participants to respond to the prompt: ‘What three words describe land use in Scotland today?’ He gathered the responses into a word cloud – most of which aligned closely with his experience cycling through Scotland’s varied landscapes. The two most common words were impoverished and monoculture.

We then heard from Huw Connick, holistic land practitioner, whose current work focuses on native woodland, alternative agricultural management and peatland restoration. Huw introduced Allan Savory’s framework of holistic land management and highlighted its multi-scalar applicability: from a community garden to a national park. These are complex systems where land, animals, people, plants, fungi and more are all interrelated. He argued that we must attune land management to support the four ecosystem processes: the water cycle, the mineral cycle, energy flow and community dynamics (the relationship between all organisms in an ecosystem).

Our final provocateur, Kerry Morrison, is an embedded artist at Crichton Carbon Centre, where she curated Peatland Connections. In her work, Kerry explores human and more-than-human connections with the environment: how we move through it, manage it, take from it and care for it. Kerry shared personal insights on the role of artists in engaging communities in landscape restoration, drawing from her experience delivering ‘The Gatherings’ in collaboration with the Pendle Hill Landscape Partnership. She described the socio-ecological impact of artworks such as the Pendle Peat Pie (opens a PDF) and Sowing in time, which raised awareness of local peat loss while creating a direct way for people to become involved in peatland restoration. She emphasised the fundamental roles of creative practices and artists’ approaches to facilitate dialogue and connection with human and more-than-human communities.

Creative consultation

The workshop then moved into an experimental ‘creative consultation’, where Ted Leeming and Steve Connelly, a freelance researcher and facilitator, were seeking to develop an open-source toolkit to help guide individuals, groups, land managers and organisations in their considerations of place.

We split into small groups for a creative consultation with the provocation: ‘Equal Rights for all in the proposed Galloway National Park’. Participants worked through a game board with the following questions:

  1. Who are all? (Future generations, more-than-human beings, farmers, landowners…)
  2. What rights? (The rights of nature, the right to freely access information, the right to common good…)
  3. How do we deliver them? (Land-based education, land re–distribution, localised decision-making systems…)

‘The unusual and exhilarating (and exhausting!) thing about this workshop was how quickly and enthusiastically a diverse group of people engaged in meaningful discussion about philosophy and some very deep moral issues. Simply asking the unusual question about rights, rather than the usual “what should we do?” or “how can we do this?” unlocked a really valuable debate about principles, helping to explore crucial questions about the ethics underpinning land use decisions.’

Steve Connelly

Fireside discussion

After a tea break in the Gracefield Arts Centre gallery space, the small groups were invited to share their ideas with all participants in a ‘fireside discussion’. Morag Paterson, Glenkens-based photographer, and Sarah O’Hare, Senior Green Arts Officer at Creative Carbon Scotland, connected the threads of discussion in a visual display.

Some of the thoughts and questions that came up during the discussion were:

  • Who is not in the room today and whose voice needs to be heard?
  • Who speaks for nature?
  • The context of these conversations shifts the conclusion. How would a discussion in a muddy field or a mountainside impact the conclusion?
  • Perceived knowledge imbalances between people can prevent them from speaking out. Perhaps the consultation process moves too fast? We need longer-term, deeper engagement.
  • Language can bring people together or alienate. We need appropriate and jargon-free language. An example of this could be saying ‘planting new forests’ rather than ‘afforestation’.
  • How can the arts play a role in developing alternative decision-making spaces?

‘The workshop was experimental and it’s fair to say we were completely broadsided at the direction the conversations took. It was not as expected, or what the initial provocations anticipated. In this light, I remain unsure if it delivered to the original workshop scope some may have expected. But the unintended results were exceptional and went far beyond what we could ever have hoped for. We are now gathering the findings and working on various legacies that we will share with participants for their comments prior to finalising, to ensure they feel their day was valued and purposeful. Outcomes include a consultation response to the current proposal for a national park in the south west of Scotland (though as a “Charter of Rights” it could just as easily be applied anywhere) and development of the land use toolkit.’

Ted Leeming

Further resources

  • Throughout Ted’s creative research of regenerative and extractive land use in Scotland, he referenced historical maps on the National Library of Scotland’s website. By comparing georeferenced maps produced hundreds of years apart, you can visualise landscape-scale transformation.
  • Many groups discussed the rights of nature in the creative consultation. Mihnea Tănăsescu’s article provides context to the growing number of countries that have passed laws granting rights to nature, and questions whether this legal mechanism always benefits the natural environment.
  • In the fireside discussion, we touched on the role of localised and alternative decision-making systems in societal transformation, such as sociocracy, a peer governance system based on consent.

 


About Green Tease

This event took place as part of the Green Tease events series and network, a project organised by Culture for Climate Scotland, bringing together people from arts and environmental backgrounds to discuss, share expertise and collaborate. Green Tease forms part of our culture/SHIFT programme.