Art in the Meadow
Portraits of Long Mead: Summer 2021.Success comes to the NRN and Long Mead -
Multiple winners at the International Art Competition of the Floodplain Meadows Partnership!
Four members of the Nature Recovery Network (NRN) have featured in the Open University’s Floodplain Meadows Partnership Art Competition.
Entries came from as far away as Russia and Bangladesh. The overall joint-winner was Eynsham’s wonderful Alice Walker, who organised Art in the Meadow on Long Mead with Catriona Bass.
Four out the twelve winners were NRN members from Eynsham and Farmoor: Alice Walker, Julia Loken, Jeff Coles and Jill Colchester and their work will appear in the Floodplain Meadows Partnership's annual calendar. Three more NRNers were finalists: Sarah Couch, Nick Lewis and Emily Terry. Their work was used to illustrate the Open University’s recent International Conference on Floodplain Meadows.
You can see the artists in action in Working with Nature: Rivers and Coast, a documentary just released by Oxford University's Nature-Based Solutions Initiative for COP26. The segment of Art in the Meadow can be seen at 7.43 mins from the beginning, accompanied by the lilting pipes of Eynsham Morris’ Maestro, Rupert Boulting.
Huge congratulations to everyone!
The artists of Eynsham and surrounding villages are playing a really valuable role in raising awareness of these rare wildflower meadows, so supporting the work being done on the ground to protect and restore floodplain wildflower meadows. Their creativity and passion are inspiring new NRN art workshops, events, and opportunities - hopefully to be announced very soon!
‘Nothing can change humanity’s basic needs, but arts can change our desires, which are the source of most of our impact on the Earth’s environment and biological diversity.’
Minik Rosing, 2021