Earthed: The Trees’ Tale is a giant piece of green storytelling by Part Exchange Co and a project that has grown over nearly two years via collaboration with communities, visual artists, land artists, a sound designer, director, writer, numerous schools, community members, historians, archivists, environmentalists, geologists and many more.   It’s for anybody who’s ever climbed a tree, built a den, hidden in undergrowth, jumped in a puddle, dug a hole, swum in the sea or traipsed through mud for the hell of it – and for anybody who’s done none of these things, but wishes...

  ‘The night was lost before the sun, to wide eyes and white bliss and a place as real as smoke…’ Grafitti text found on Ashton Meadows, beneath Brunel Way, Jan 2014 Consolidating the reading, photographs, research and conversations of the Ear​thed team so far - along with a chilly January site visit that began before dawn - this document by writer David Lane proposes how a mythology and landform might emerge simultaneously from a selected site, and why a new mythology might transform our relationship with the land. Searching for a structure, dynamic and purpose that...

David arrived at Ashton Meadows before dawn on January 9th, undertaking a day of various exercises to get his head around the site. You can see some of the images from the day in theField Trip photo diary. Below are a few pages from the notebook and some text that particularly caught his eye. 7.33am - 8.00am: 'I'm not alone. From about 50m out I can see a mound, looks like discarded binbags and a traffic cone under the underpass: which itself is spooky enough - lots of places to hide which I find unnerving. It's a homeless person - a man, I think, too big/tall for a woman. Blue sleeping...

[Above: Mick Petts and David Lane by the magnificent Pit Pony's hooves in Pennalta Park, South Wales] Over two days the team visited various sites to explore their thinking further around Earthed. Writer David Lane took a day out at selected site Ashton Meadows in Bristol, and then joined landform sculptor Mick Petts and artistic director of Part Exchange Co Rachel Aspinwall in South Wales the day after to visit some other inspirational landforms. You can take a brief photo-tour of our exploits below.   Day 1: Ashton Meadows, Before Dawn - a light emerges from the darkness... Day...

Project tree by landform sculptor Mick Petts, David's collaborator on Earthed,  Often I find myself working with other writers, trying to find the best process to support their work whilst they’re still in the middle of creating it. There are tried and tested metaphors for describing this that seem really appropriate for Earthed: drawing the map of the land when you haven’t found the edges yet; getting a bird’s-eye view when you can’t help but see the details down with the bugs and beetles, or are digging so far into the subterranean layers of an idea that you’ve lost what needs...

Rachel Aspinwall, Part Exchange Co & The Engine House's Artistic Director, reports back on some early days Earthed actvities. So far in our search for how land art and writing might collaborate, we've had writers donning wellies and discovering the sculptural qualities of hawthorn and land artists writing accidental poetry! Getting outside and letting the experience of being in Bristol's green spaces influence our thinking has been crucial. We all discovered the delights of Stoke Park for the first time too. A really underused green resource that offers incredible views of the city...

Q. Who are you and what do you do? I’m a playwright and dramaturg and spend a lot of time looking at how writing for performance is created, where it can lead or structure a process, and how writers can fit into new disciplines by bringing a dramaturgical (compositional) perspective on the whole. Q. Who else is taking part in your process and what do they each bring? I’m working with Mick Petts, who I’ve been calling a ‘landform artist’ when other people have asked me what he does – though perhaps I need to ask him what his own label is! Mick has a fascinating knowledge of natural...

Q: Who are you and what do you do? I’m Mick Petts and I'm a Landscape Sculptor - I sculpt the land. Q. Who else is taking part in your process and what do they each bring? I’m working with David Lane, playwright and dramaturg alongside Rachel Aspinwall, Artistic Director of Part Exchange Co. David brings a wealth of knowledge of how to structure ideas, how to stretch people within the creative process and how to hone and distill those ideas - to make a body of words from the word bones. Rachel brings a can-do, will-do, make-it-happen force of energy and enthusiasm, to drive forward...