I co-ordinated a team of six artists creating outdoor sculptures and decorations for the Green Futures Field, the sustainable energy campaign arena, at Glastonbury Festival, June 2009. I spearheaded the design of the installation and took a leading role in its construction.
Photos by Oli Wade:
The theme of the field this year was "Building, Gathering, Ceremony".
Building: A future. A new world. A house, a garden, community. Sustainable resources for the future.
A building is a place, a house, a sanctuary.
Gathering: Together. Resources. Ideas. Information. Inspiration. Fruit, nuts and seeds.
A gathering is a community, a party, a festival.
Ceremony: Conscious actions. Ritual. Working together. Focussing energy. Connecting with each other, connecting with the universe. Honouring the place, the land, the spirits, the ancestors. Honouring tradition. Working to enact change.
A ceremony is a collective, conscious, significant sequence of actions that provide focus and meaning.
We created a winding ceremonial pathway from the entrance of the Field to the wood henge at the centre, via three shrines honouring the druidic elements of Land, Sea and Sky. Pennants at the entrance way and at each shrine connected the historical imagery of these elements (the White Horse of Uffington; sea creatures and boats; birds and hot air balloons) with sustainable methods of energy generation (ground source heat pumps; tidal generators; windmills and solar panels) and traditional druidic symbols for each element (stag and stone, salmon and wave, hawk and spear).
Footprints, signposts and painted clues led the visitor from the entrance way through the stations for each element to a stopping point in the centre of a Wood Henge. Each shrine included seating, decorations and a verse poem above a hanging basket of coloured mosaic tiles. Each of the shrines featured decorations centred around that element; a life-size, antlered wooden stag, flowers and wire sculptures of rabbits for Land; blue streamers, a turbine and wire salmon for Sea; windmills, a wire hawk, butterflies and fairies for Sky. Hand-carved wooden arrows at each shrine directed the visitor to the next stopping point, and between stations signposts pointed out other objects of interest in the Field.
Participants were invited to take a tile from the hanging basket at each shrine and carry them to the Henge, where a final banner depicted Stonehenge and the sacred animals of stag, salmon and hawk, plus a design showing the pattern for an elemental floor mosaic. The mosaic was laid out on a round area of sand cut out of the turf. When adding their tiles to the mosaic, each visitor was invited to contemplate the journey that had brought them there, and to imbue their offering with whatever significance felt appropriate to them.
At the end of the festival, we donated the three Land, Sea and Sky banners to the Green Futures Field, and various team members took away the other three banners. The wood and wire stag sculpture was installed in the Permaculture garden as a permanent feature, to become a framework for climbing plants.
The three sets of verses were adapted from the Song of Amergin, and read as follows:
LAND
I am the stag of seven tines
I am the hill where poets walk
I am the boar of seven battles
I am the blaze on every hill
I am the spear that roars for blood
SEA
I am the womb of every hope
I am the queen of every hive
I am the salmon in the still pool
I am the song in every heart
I am the wind over deep waters
SKY
I am the hawk above the cliff
I am the shield for every head
I am the tear the sun lets fall
I am the skill in every hand
I am the world of knowledge