You are now able to pre-order the new book inspired by Joanna Macy‘s work The Great Turning. My project ‘Seeing the Forest: the Hollywood diaries‘ was chosen for  ‘The Great Artful Inquiry‘ chapter on artistic responses  to the themes in Joanna’s internationally acclaimed work. It’s very exciting to think my work will be appearing in a book – , its just a brief one page synopsis of my project with a still from one of my films, and I’m still not really sure how it happened!

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One of the art curators involved in the project, Dr. Chris Seeley, has a considerable background in Action Research* and Peter Reason, the editor of this new book, is a leading figure in academia, formerly of Bath University, in regards to Action Research being employed to engage people in sustainability.

Action Research is one of the methodologies I will be using to describe my own work. In fact, it seems that my work was chosen because I’m actively learning, thinking and creating through my actions/practices of new permanent non-clearfell forest management. Funny how one just does things and then finds out that there is so many others doing/thinking along similar lines. However, I’ve been a reader of the leading UK ecology, society, arts magazine Resurgence  (for US readers Resurgence is similar to Orion) these past 14 years and Peter Reason has often contributed articles – so I have probably have unconsciously been tuning into these ideas from him for a long time. Joanna Macy has written the Keynote article about the new book in Resurgence this month too (Issue 277 • March/April 2013).

The date for the first UK launch by VALA Publishers has been announced – 17 April in The Music Club, Bristol and I will be with other artists showing films and works. One of the other projects is a ‘A Little patch of Ground‘ – see the video below. It’s terrific. The book is packed with other  inspiring projects – just ordinary people getting out and practising all manner of sustainable things, getting their hands dirty and so connecting more, giving more back to the places and environments that support them.

Related articles

Seeley, Chris (2010) ‘Uncharted Territory: Imagining a stronger relationship between the arts and action research’.  Journal of Action Research; March 2011; 9 (1)

• Seeing the forest selected for The Great Turning Artful Inquiry (ecoartfilm.com)
• Smallest forest in Ireland inspected for new COFORD Low Impact Silviculture Systems (LISS) survey (ecoartfilm.com)
• Tending the wild – lessons from the forest toward deep sustainability at TheGallery, Bournemouth Arts University (ecoartfilm.com)