Planet Purbeck is thrilled to cross-promote the Inside Out Dorset Festival by Activate
This event is part of the Inside Out Dorset 2023 Festival with a host of events & installations on site for you to enjoy too, plus the opportunity for you to explore Wild Woodbury - Dorset Wildlife Trust’s flagship community rewilding project
- - - - - -
SONGS FOR A SHIFTING SOIL
Performances are at 11:30am AND 2:30pm on Fri 22nd // Sat 23rd // Sun 24th
What’s good for soil, is good for us.
We don’t often consider it, but the soil beneath our feet is one of the key battlegrounds in the various ecological crises that we face. Healthy soil is the foundation of biodiversity and resilient ecosystems. Pretty much all of our food is directly dependent on our soil. So why do we find it such a tough matter to engage with?
“I haven’t thought a lot about what’s underneath, but I’m beginning to get aware of that more and more. And it wasn’t in my education, you know. And you, when you think back to my child… university days, you know, nobody thought about that, this sort of thing at all.”
As you sit down on warm radiators heated by a glowing, wood-fired altar for our changing climate, Collectief Walden warms you with Songs for a Shifting Soil. Using word-for-word accounts of people who have acquainted themselves with Dorset’s soil in many different ways, we tell a story of reconnecting with the earth we live on.
Wild Woodbury, Dorset’s rewilding area is expected to undergo some dramatic natural changes in the years to come. Songs for a Shifting Soil is an artistic baseline measurement which tracks socio-ecological changes in its communities.
“It’s, I think that it feels more like it’s wet and slimy in Somerset, and it all kind of went squidgy between my toes and things, whereas Dorset’s a bit drier and a bit more like soil rather than mud. And I love, like, the soil coming up between my toes because it just… Yeah, it’s kind of a freeing feeling. You kind of can think when you’re not wearing shoes.”
