SPARK #25: Window on Lindow

6 July 2024 / 11:00-13:00

Artist and Lindow Art Trail curator Phil Barton will host SPARK members on a guided trail walk around Lindow Moss. Phil will share information and insights into the formation of the raised bog, its history and future prospects through the artworks on show, including work by himself, Liz Ellis, Juliette Hamilton, Rupert Randall and Steve Sutton. At the time of the walk a multiple piece by over 700 local primary school children will also be partly installed. Phil will discuss the involvement of the local community and the role it is hoped that the Art Trail will have on the future of Lindow Moss.

The artworks, inspired by Lindow Moss, its past and its future, have been created for this new Art Trail which forms part of the Discover Lindow season. This is a celebration not only of the 1984 anniversary of the discovery of Lindow Man, now recognised as Britain’s most famous bog body, but the successful decade-long local campaign which resulted in the 2019 financial and planning deal to stop peat cutting and secure the restoration of this lowland peat bog; restoration started in 2022.

Unfortunately this event is not wheelchair accessible – it is on a peat bog and a lot of the paths are very uneven, although there are plans to change this in the future.

To attend the walk, please register here

The meeting point will be at the railway sleeper on Rotherwood Road near the junction with Battery Lane. The sleeper stops traffic from entering the Moss from Rotherwood Road

Phil Barton
The driver for Phil’s practice is the sixth great extinction taking place in the Anthroprocene Era crystalised by Gustav Metzger’s 2015 Worldwide Call for Action to Remember Nature. You can read the research paper he submitted for his Masters in Art & Science at Central Saint Martins which explored the development of ecoart interactive with nature and place on the one hand and the public and communities on the other.

Phil builds his creative practice on a 35-year career as a social entrepreneur in local environmental regeneration during which he established and built a number of not-for-profit organisations including Keep Britain Tidy, Groundwork, the Mersey Basin Trust as part of the 25-year regional Mersey Basin Campaign, the National Centre for Business and Ecology and the Community Technical Aid Centre in Manchester. There is more about his motivation and creative practice in Joana Alarcão’s November 2023 interview.

Based in Rusholme, Manchester, jointly with, and inspired by, his life partner Helena Kettleborough, an academic at MMU School of Management, he have established the Centre for Connected Practice and initiated Creative Rusholme.

https://philbartonartist.c4cp.net https://www.instagram.com/philbxyz/