School children get involved in the artwork for the Meadows

105 local school children recently took part in The Secret World Under Trees workshop led by art and wellbeing charity, Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination. The children, which included those from Arbury Primary School and St Laurence’s Catholic Primary School spent time prior to the workshops collecting root samples from plants growing in their school grounds before coming together to discuss how things grow beneath our feet and how we might relate to them.

During the workshop they created fantastic pieces of artwork which have been shaped to bring together a flavour of the children’s ideas into six new hangings. These will be exhibited as part of the Forest of Imagination exhibition and at the opening of the new Meadows Community Centre.

Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination also worked with artist Lilah Fowler – who has been commissioned to create artworks for the Meadows site – and plant scientist Jen McGaley from the University of Cambridge to develop the workshops.

The artworks will be on display at The Forest of Imagination on Saturday 27th November at Wandlebury Country Park from 10am to 3pm and Sunday 5th December on Christ’s Pieces, Cambridge from 10am to 3pm. This free city-wise celebration of creativity, community and the natural world will contain 50 beautiful gauze hangings created from work made by nearly 400 children and young people across the region.

CCI artists will also be inviting visitors to contribute to a unique artwork they will be creating collaboratively on both days. Visitors can also link to a specially created soundscape about the forest to enjoy as they wander amongst the work and read a new poem commissioned to mark these events from Cambridge Poet Kaddy Benyon. The Suspended Forest is a ‘found’ poem using words and phrases taken from tree stories gathered as part of the Forest project in 2020.

For further information about the project and links to the soundscape and poem please visit www.cambridgecandi.org.uk.