ccp – the PLACE Collective

Kate Caoimhe Arthur is the LUNZ Hub Creative Collaborative Placement artist in Northern Ireland, where she is enquiring into Land, Livestock and Livelihoods. She’s meeting researchers at the Agrifood and Biosciences Institute, and livestock farmers across Northern Ireland as well as researchers at the Agrifood and Biosciences Institute. In this blog, she shares reflections on her meeting with Professor John Gilliland.

A first meeting

It was a great pleasure to meet Professor John Gilliland in December, and hear about his years of experience in farming, policy and innovation.

The Gilliland family have been farming at the 120-acre Brook Hall in Derry-Londonderry since 1856. Although John has handed over the day-to-day management of the farm to his son, David, he continues to pioneer sustainability innovations he’s made over thirty years, and champion them across the world in educational and outreach settings.

A view across the sea, with a low sun in the sky and a palm tree in the foreground

We met not at Brook Hall, but on the north east coast of Ireland, looking out onto the distant view of the Isle of Man, the Scottish coast and a just-visible Cumbria. The clearness of sea and sky gave us the right conditions to take a long view of the life of Brook Hall, stretching back through the generations of Prof. Gilliland’s family, and to look in some detail about the different innovations trialled at Brook Hall, and the career it had inspired in farming, in policy and international education.

REvelations of LIDAR

I was inspired to hear about the present experiments with LIDAR and the opportunities it is offering to farmers throughout Northern Ireland. This remote sensing technology uses pulsed lasers (from an aircraft or drones) to ‘read’ a landscape and produce 3D digital models of the land’s surface. Through LIDAR, farmers have the singular experience of viewing their entire landscape in 3D, enabling views which indicate the historical topography and composition.

The topographical layers can be stripped back, allowing us to see the entire view as if we can lift a layer away. It can be rotated and examined like a cake you could slice through. The potential for landowners is huge, for example, being able to identify drainage routes and run-off points for floodwaters. John tells me that this technology has allowed 93% of Northern Irelands’ farms to be surveyed through DAERA’s Soil Nutrient Health Scheme: a world first for delivery and uptake.

Traditional, ancient and pathways of change

Another fascinating topic we discuss is the move at Brook Hall towards combining tree planting with cattle, and the consequent health of the soil. This moves away from a ‘traditional’ separation between parkland and grazing land, and towards a more ancient form of land use.

The meeting was my first in a series of meetings across Northern Ireland as part of my Creative Collaborative Placement with the LUNZ Hub. It was fertile ground for my first steps into thinking about the opportunities for poetry.

… poets and farmers have the same core skills at the heart of our activities – long and careful observation.

John and I reflected that poets and farmers have the same core skills at the heart of our activities – long and careful observation. It left me wondering if I could write with the intensity and precision of LIDAR, and what a poem would find by stripping back the layers one by one and rotating a farm.

I am so grateful to John for his time and company. I look forward to seeing what farmers in other counties have to say, and I hope I can meet with someone in all six!

A man standing on a patio with the sea behind him

More information:

John Gilliland is a special advisor to the UK’s Agriculture Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) and to Quality Meat Scotland (QMS), and chair of the UK’s Sustainable Farm Networks. He is also the Professor of Practice in Agriculture and Sustainability at Queens University Belfast; and chair of the innovative, EIP-Agri funded, farmer led, carbon farming project, ARC Zero. His family farm has independently been verified to be ‘Beyond’ Net Zero. John chaired the writing of the N. Ireland Sustainable Land Management Strategy which led to the creation of N. Ireland’s Soil Nutrient Health and LiDAR Scheme, which received an investment of £38m to baseline soil, trees and hedges across Northern Ireland’s farms.

DAERA is the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Northern Ireland)

Find out more about the context for Kate’s research here.

Daksha Patel is one of the artists involved in the Creative Collaborative Placement scheme with the LUNZ Hub. Daksha is liaising with the Rothamsted Research institute, following a line of enquiry beginning with a focus on supporting agroecosystem transitions in the context of a changing world.

In this blog, Daksha shares her experience at Rothamsted Research, her engagement with the institution’s ‘Farm Platform’, activities with staff, and emergent insights and questions. (To find out more about Daksha and her placement overview, visit this blog here).

Visiting Rothamsted Research Farm Platform

My visit to Rothamsted Research, North Wyke, was pivotal in understanding the vast scope of the work at the world’s most instrumented ‘farm platform’. It is part farm (arable and livestock), part science living laboratory, and part data collection. I was surprised and delighted to find that the team is very international, which was unexpected in a rural setting near Dartmoor.

The work at Rothamsted Research broadly consists of testing, experimenting and measuring the impact of different farming practices upon climate change, biodiversity, soil health, emissions to water and air, and food production. Ultimately, their research feeds into developing farming policies within the wider economic, political, environmental and social contexts of the UK: important work given the impact of farming on the environment.

Insruments in a field; these are used in monitoring weather

Learning In Place

My first day was spent looking around the different experimental sites with science technician Chris Powe whilst capturing some drone footage – this was the perfect introduction. I was shown the biomass plots, the weather station, farm buildings, livestock and crops. Each field on the instrumented North Wyke Farm Platform has an array of sensors; some measuring the water quality of the run-off, others collecting the levels of greenhouse gases emitted from the fields or data about soil moisture content. Samples of soil and water are collected regularly; drone footage is used to measure the growth rate of different crops.

A scientist wearing a white coat and pouring a liquid into a glass container

The scientists at Rothamsted Research North Wyke are working on a variety of different research questions. Prior to my visit, I spoke online to a few and subsequently explored how I could bring key ideas from our discussions into a creative workshop during my visit.

It struck me that everyone at Rothamsted Research
is asking different questions about farming practice
– often really complex multi-layered questions
with no easy answers.

It struck me that everyone at Rothamsted Research is asking different questions about farming practice – often really complex multi-layered questions with no easy answers. The notion of questioning became the catalyst for the creation of my first artworks – a series of ten digital prints. The use of text in conceptual art is often associated with social and political commentary, and this format seemed appropriate for this work. The questions were deliberated over time, and I think of the artworks as ‘print provocations’ because they are a stimulus for discussions, rather than questions that can easily be answered. They are open questions which are interrelated – they probe and enquire without fixed parameters and they enquire about the senses as well as the brain. The prints merge text with images of Rothamsted Research that have been edited to create a highly pixellated and colourful data visualization aesthetic to refer to data collection and modelling processes.

Posters laying text over a background of visualised data

The questions are open questions which are interrelated – they probe and enquire without fixed parameters and they enquire about the senses as well as the brain.

A canteen area with chairs, tables, and posters on the wall

Questions as Starting Points: the ‘Adaptations’ Workshop

The prints were installed in the canteen at Rothamsted Research North Wyke with QR codes to enable all staff to add their responses online. The questions became a starting point for a workshop. In my practice, a creative workshop often comprises some key elements – it brings people together in a playful and reflective way, there is energy and movement, and of course a creative activity. A workshop is less focused on teaching people ‘how to paint’ and more on the dynamics of a group coming together. This was particularly important at Rothamsted Research because I had learnt that they don’t often have an opportunity to do this.

The workshop was titled ‘Adaptations’ and began with a quick-fire writing activity in response to the print provocations. We had some wonderful responses such as: ‘Good farmers are engineers and polymaths, they know loads of stuff about a range of disciplines’ and ‘Healthy soil is like chocolate cake – dark, full of life, smells good, structured, aerated.’ A group discussion naturally followed this, with some really interesting thoughts upon what gets lost in translation from science to policy.

… some really interesting thoughts upon
what gets lost in translation from science to policy.

People leaning over a table and writing on a large sheet of paper in a workshop setting

Next, I asked participants to choose an object from a selection of vegetables, fruit and cereals grown in the UK and some toy farmyard animals. They were asked to write a short text from the position of their object by telling humans what they needed to thrive. This darkly humorous piece is written from the position of an onion: ‘If you see it from my perspective, things are pretty dark & gloomy. Not just because I am mostly underground with the soil, but because you always choose to exploit the system for your own personal gain. Even if you think it’s for others, it’s always your choice. I am rooted in this earth. I am reaching for sunshine and growth. I am a big fat acidic layered being, and I don’t want to be ripped from my home and put in a korma, which inevitably ends up in the bin.’

Lastly, we looked at some photographs of species of flora and fauna that are disappearing from the UK landscape as a result of farming practices. We explored if their loss deprives the natural world of a spectrum of colours (this article makes interesting reading). Next, I demonstrated how to create colour samples using pastels by isolating sections of photographs. I often find that the richest conversations happen when people are immersed in a creative activity. There was a lovely buzz in the room as people settled into mixing their chosen colours.

I often find that the richest conversations happen
when people are immersed in a creative activity.

A mix of writing an objects laid on paper, with grasses and seeds

Prior to the workshop, a few scientists expressed a desire for the print questions to be clearly and empirically answerable. By the end, the conversations reflected a higher tolerance for ambiguity and multi-layered answers. Given the complexity and interconnected nature of their research, ambiguity and flux are inevitably part of the systems they are measuring. Artistic practice typically has a high tolerance of ambiguity, and this is perhaps the most valuable thing an artist can bring to this environment.

A chart of colours presented on individual rectangles

In Daksha’s next blog she will talk about her visit to a farm in Dartmoor.

For more about Daksha’s placement focus, visit this blog.

Tag: ccp

CCP: Poet at Work in Northern Ireland