In collaboration with Arts Institute Plymouth, we offered a day-long event exploring process, making, and the role of experimental art at a time of crisis.

 

In 2020, ‘Forests’, a three-year performance experiment, premiered as a theatre piece at The House, Plymouth. Weeks later, the pandemic closed cultural events across the country. Facing uncertainty about the project’s touring future, we decided to translate the piece into a film. In the summer of 2021 we re-imagined ‘Forests’, returning to the place in which it was made - the exceptional landscapes of the Forest of Dean.

 

The project is rooted in years of work that began in 2016 with material born from the entanglements and careful weaving between a group of people exploring the questions of how we might transform our relationship with land, ourselves, and each other in a time of ecological emergency.
 

As the company enters its next stage of experimental making and artistic residencies from its base, Aercwel Mill, Eden’s Cave invited audiences to engage in collaborative discussions about how we make art in these times. ‘Forests: New Ways of Making’ charted the rigorous and devoted development of a research project that defied form and evolved through an urgent commitment to personal and collective change through art-making in the era of climate breakdown.