Desborough walk

Join us for a creative walk in Desborough for our Intervention Kit project! Details on the flyer:

Light Creations for a Dark Day

Our last walk for the series Light Walks for Dark Days lived up to its name. A grey, misty and damp day with little contrast or colour.

This did not deter our Light Walkers however, seeing the greyness as a perfect opportunity to play with lights and flourescence - how could we introduce colour and light into the perfect backdrop of a foggy October day?

Armed with glow-sticks we set off to find dark spaces around the lake at Sywell Country Park.

There were many small gems to spot in the mist on the way.

It was great to have us all walking in a group together again, although sadly for the last time for this series of walks.

Autumn brought its colours to interrupt the greyness of the day.

Nipping into a gap in the hedge, we sneaked off the path and into the woodland. A beautiful hawthorn tree stood, its trunk in the dark and a low canopy spreading. We set to work to dress the dark space with flourescence.

Our sculptural light creations glowed quietly amongst the dark tangle of branches, appearing like floating aliens against the green.

We tried out our creations in other dark space, a natural fence in the hedgerow:

and an installation in the bird hide, the sun illuminating the colours as it caught them through the viewing slit.

It was nearly 4 o'clock when we finished circumnavigating the lake, and darker still. All the way round we had been searching for a perfect place of dark water, but had not found it. Carolyn was particularly determined to find the right place for our final installation of the day, and as we made our way back to the car park we suddenly found it! The Sheepwash running along the side of the car park took the water under trees where it was decidedly dark and made the perfect place for our final installation, floating lanterns.



Serenely bobbing along, they rode the current gently and gathered together at the root of a tree before we set them free again. Flames flared and died, turning from orange to blue.

We watched them for some time, then retrieved them from the water with bamboo canes, and left, leaving no trace but keeping our memories.

Our exhibition of the project will open on Thursday 20th December and run until 6th January at Market Street Mews, Kettering. Watch this blog for more details - we hope to see you there!

Wellbeing Walks

Corby Station

Our project now starts in earnest.  In June we plan to visit Derbyshire for Undiscovered Networks, but before that in May we will be starting our exploration around Corby for our associated project Wellbeing Walks.

Wellbeing Walks is a walking and mapping project for young people in Corby.  There are two reasons for the project:
1.  to find good routes to walk from Corby Station, thus expanding the rail network into a walking network;
2.  to find walks that will give people a sense of wellbeing - to make maps of those walks so that other people can find those feelings of wellbeing too!

There is lots of evidence that people feel better by taking physical exercise like walking.  Carole and I also find it relieves stress to discover the beautiful things around where you live or along a walk.

So we are going to walk with groups of young people from Corby Station out along the 4 points of the compass:  North, South, East and West.  We will walk and make maps of the beautiful things that we find, however small:

things of beauty
things of mystery
things of history
places for meditation
places for exercise, to breathe, to stretch
places for foraging
places for wildlife

Our maps will then become available for other people to use and discover those places, whether they are people in Corby looking for something on their doorstep, or visitors via Corby Station.

We hope to do two walks in May and two in June.

If you are a young person and want to get involved in the walks to make the maps, please get in touch.

The project is supported by N-Step for young people in Northamptonshire, Corby Community Arts and Northamptonshire Community Foundation.