I’m starting a new project, connecting artists with specific patches of land: gardens, commons, public spaces. It’s a project of celebration, and has to do with land, food, joy and belonging. I was thinking of the project as a patchwork: a project of connection, repair, usefulness and beauty. A friend of mine who is all about words, gave me a lovely Welsh name for it : “patshyn”, which is the diminutive form of “patsh”, one way of saying “patch”.
To begin with, I’m going to trial the idea with myself as the artist, working with two small local organisations : Banc Organics, a non-profit market garden company that I have been part of for many years; and Cydweli Common Ground, who do work in the village of Kidwelly on several pieces of open land, and who are also working on a communal fruit and vegetable garden. I’ll follow both through this year as their resident artist and chronicler. And with Banc, I’m going to focus especially on a seed trial that they are part of.
I’ll keep you posted on my work here, and will also use this blog to explore some of the questions that this work brings up, and some of the reasons why I think it’s so very important.
sian barlow 