LANDING

‘What we know and understand we come to love, and what we love we will protect’ 
Aldo Leopold 

In June 2024, Lancaster Arts and We Live Here hosted LANDING, a micro-festival of live events that explored our relationships with the natural world and what connects each of us with nature.

LANDING took place at The Battery in the West End of Morecambe in Lancashire around a site with three shipping containers inviting visitors to explore the natural and built environment around them.

How the sea connects us with the whole of the world’s history. It’s the same water that washes my feet here in Morecambe.

The project was a partnership between Lancaster Arts and We Live Here, a national consortium that commissions and presents public realm projects with UK-based and international artists to build deeper connections between communities and the natural environments around them. LANDING was also an opportunity to work with artists in Morecambe as well as local community groups to shape and inform these commissions. 

NEST, with artist Henna Asikainen, brought people together to construct a human sized nest to explore ideas of home and belonging. The nest remained on Morecambe beach for a couple of week and was used as a gathering place.

People really understand the activity of building something together, opens your world view to something else.

Taey Iohe and Youngsook Choi, of artist collective Breakwater created a guided sound-walk on Morecambe sands called Cockles of my Heart. Walkers wore headsets and walked to the low tide mark listening to the sound installation. Plans are already in place to repeat the sound-walks in the near future, so watch this space. 

Over those 45 minutes, I felt the wind, moved with the rhythm of the waves, and sensed the beat of my own heart. It was truly one of the most enriching experiences of my life, fostering a profound connection with nature.

Museum of Nature and Us
Each day of LANDING, visitors were asked to bring an object or artwork which connected them to nature to contribute to a museum fashioned out of a shipping container which grew over the three days. Young people at Stanley’s Community Centre offered their responses to nature that also looked at their fears of nature.

We collected ideas of what connects people in Morecambe to the natural world. Have a listen to what they had to say in this short film.

The weekend featured arts workshops in music making with More Music producer Leroy Lupton, and clay with artist Elizabeth Clough.

You can have a listen to the soundscape created with participants contributions by Leroy here.

No Such Thing
We offered an opportunity for a few lucky people to enjoy a free lunch at The Beach Cafe, situated nearby, in exchange for conversation about connections to nature, a project conceived by Manchester company Quarantine.  

They say there’s no such thing as a stranger, only friends we haven’t met before – this is entirely true!...it’s been the highlight of my year so far – thank you!

Container Conversations
We hosted public discussions in one of the shipping containers with invited guests on topics such as how we can be a part of nature and access it without harm and what prevents many people from experiencing nature regularly and how nature influences how we think about the places we live.

Culture and art are vital to any community

These are the Things
Visitors to LANDING contributed song lyrics along with their ideas of what connected them personally to nature and these were written on the pavement. Community musician and choir leader, Anni Tracy collected all of these ideas to create a LANDING song called These are the Things. Singers from across Morecambe and Lancaster rehearsed the song with Anni and then welcomed the final walkers returning from Cockles of my Heart with the song. Together with the walkers, everyone sang this song in and around the nest on the beach to close the LANDING festival.

You can find the lyrics to the song, 'These are the Things' here and watch the performance below.

LANDING has been part of a national collaborative programme entitled We Live Here with Norwich and Norfolk Festival and the Freedom Festival in Hull as partners. The festival included many artists and people from Morecambe and could only have been created through every visitor’s contributions. It was about listening, listening to the many sounds and stories of nature, many of them not so visible and listening to each other. 

Thanks to all of our artist partners: Henna Asikainen, Elizabeth Clough, Youngsook Choi, Taey Iohe, Alex McLean, Leroy Lupton, Anthony Padgett, Anni Tracy and Tim Harrison, Artistic Director of We Live Here. 

And the many contributing voices : Ifeolu Akintunde, Rich and Amanda Berry of Reel Things, Anita Chamberlain, Victoria Eden, Mandy Knott of Natural England, Pete Moser, Gurmit Sidhu, Phil Sykes, Joanna Young and Stanleys Community Centre youth forum. 

My hearts been taken out, shook around and put back in.