Living By The Ash Tree Waters: Andover Trees United invite local residents to celebrate the ash trees and riverbanks of the Watercress and Winterbournes
Thursday 31st March 2022, Andover: An Andover Trees United project exploring the Ash trees and banks of the local streams and rivers that form part of the Watercress and Winterbournes catchment is taking place from now through to July 2022 and the organisation is inviting the local community to get involved.
Funded through the Watercress and Winterbourne Landscape Partnership Scheme supported by NLHLF (National Lottery Heritage Lottery Fund) and delivered in conjunction with place-based artist, James Aldridge and folk musician, Paul Sartin, the project aims to celebrate, through art and music, the local chalk streams and the Ash trees that grow alongside them and from which Andover derives its name*.
The ’Living By The Ash Tree Waters’ project will involve a series of artist-led walks in Andover, Appleshaw and Vernham Dean where participants will be equipped with ‘nature explorer’ backpacks, specially designed by participating school children, containing the tools they need to create an artistic response to the riparian landscape. A further series of workshops will invite participants to learn and perform traditional folk music, with a focus on locally collected songs, from Andover’s stream-related heritage.
The community music workshops will lead to three riverside performances, which will link to the artist-led walks, providing each location with a day of waterside celebration.
England has 85% of the world’s 200 chalk streams, many of which are found in Hampshire. Unfortunately due to the pollution of water courses due to chemical fertilisers from farming and other pollutants these iconic habitats are in decline and the project aims to make residents more aware of this precious and vital part of the local environment.
Andover Trees United and James Aldridge previously collaborated on the Ash Tree Stream project where local school children used visual arts to learn about Ash trees and the prevalent and highly destructive Ash dieback disease which, current estimates suggest, is likely to lead to the loss of 95% of UK ash trees over the next 5-10 years.
Artist, James Aldridge said: “It is hoped that by celebrating the trees and the chalkstream participants will notice and engage with their river environments, developing habits of ‘seeing’ that they will take with them on future walks and explorations and develop a fondness and need to protect this threatened habitat.”
Kathryn Boler, Partnership Manager for the Watercress and Winterbournes Landscape Partnership Scheme said: “We are so pleased to be supporting this innovative project. Our local chalk streams are made precious by not only their unique ecology, but also the meaning they hold for their communities. Creative activities are a wonderful way to explore these globally rare habitats.”
Wendy Davis, ATU Founder & Leader said: “We are delighted to be working with James & Paul on this creative exploration of Andover’s chalk streams thanks to funding through the Watercress and Winterbourne Landscape Partnership Scheme. This is a great opportunity for local residents to enjoy their local environment and get involved with one of our 10th year celebratory projects.
Andover Trees United, is celebrating a decade of tree planting at Harmony Woods, the new community woodland it initiated in the year of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee back in 2012. The organisation has now accomplished its founding aim to enable 10,000 children to be part of the planting of 10,000 trees in 10 years and will be celebrating this achievement in the year of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
Throughout the remainder of the year the organisation is delivering various projects that align with the 10 year celebrations including an exhibition at Chapel Art Studios (25 June - 23 July) of their One Ash project which focuses on sustainable forestry, the gifts that trees give us and the devastating effect of the Ash dieback disease on the UK’s Ash tree population.
Participants wishing to get involved - both in the workshops and behind the scenes helping to deliver the project - can find more information on the events page of the charity’s website https://www.andovertrees.org.uk/events-calendar or by emailing volunteers@andovertrees.org.uk
*Andover: A crossroads for millennia, small groups settled here, creating homesteads and fortifying areas on the hilltops but all that really survives of those pre-Saxon times is the town's name: from 'Onna-dwfr', 'Anna-dwfr', or 'Andefera', 'the river of the ash trees’.
About Watercress and Winterbournes
Watercress and Winterbournes is a five-year Landscape Partnership Scheme that is protecting, enhancing, and celebrating seven Hampshire chalk streams – the headwaters of the Rivers Test and Itchen. It is made possible by support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The 16 partner organisations are empowering local communities to enhance these special environments, highlight their rich cultural heritage, and safeguard their future.
www.hiwwt.org.uk/winterbournes
About James Aldridge
James is a Wiltshire-based visual artist, researching the role that art can play in enabling experiences of connection, between self and place. He is an Associate Artist at MK Gallery and CAS (Chapel Arts Studios) and a member of the Climate Museum UK team. His work in educational settings, including museums, schools and universities, feeds into and informs his individual practice. Children’s playful explorations of place, for instance, offer opportunities to research the innate capacities that we are born with, and the opportunities that they offer to experience connection through making.
http://www.jamesaldridge-artist.co.uk/
About Paul Sartin
Paul is a singer, oboist, fiddler, member of Belshazzar’s Feast, Faustus (Preis der Deustchen Schallplattenkritik 2017) and the late BBC award-winning Bellowhead. A former Choral Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, he directs the Andover Museum Loft Singers, and arranged Community Choirs Folk (Faber Music). A BASCA-nominated composer, recent commissions include work for the BBC, RSC, Aldeburgh Music, and the Southbank.
About Andover Trees United
Andover Trees United is a volunteer-led group and registered charity working in partnership with schools, local authorities, businesses, specialist environmental organisations, artists and other creative practitioners to promote conservation and improve access to natural wild spaces.