FCDI BURSARY: FERAL PRACTICE, TONAL
Artist: Feral Practice
Partners: Firepool Centre for Innovation (FCDI)
Artist Feral Practice is researching various aspects of the River Tone as part of 'Tonal’ – supported by a bursary from the Firepool Centre for Digital Innovation (FCDI) and produced by Ginkgo Projects.
Recording conversations with people who have distinctive relationships with water and the river – from the Environment Agency’s Director of Water, to volunteers who survey otter populations – alongside making field sound recordings, Feral Practice is building a storied soundscape.
Feral Practice, Mangotsfield. Photograph by Charles Emerson
Recording conversations with people who have distinctive relationships with water and the river – from the Environment Agency’s Director of Water, to volunteers who survey otter populations – alongside field sound recordings, Feral Practice is building a storied soundscape.
Conversations so far include:
Helen Wakeham, Director of Water at the Environment Agency. Walking along the Tone in Taunton, they discussed Helen’s passion for – and thirty-year career in – water, delving deep into the complex issues around water pollution.
Anita Roy, writer, editor, gardener, activist, and one of the powerhouses behind Wellington Transition Town. Anita guided a walk around the lesser-known waterways of Wellington, through wild meadows, tangled undergrowth and forest garden to Fox Brothers’ Mill, once one of the largest producers of woollen cloth in the Southwest because of this excellent access to water.
Jo Pearse of the Somerset Otter Group. Spotting signs of otters along the Taunton-Bridgwater canal – slides, spraint, and a path that led from the riverbank and over the railway line to a distant rhyne. They discussed otters’ dangerous lifestyles, including crossing the M5, and toxins that build up in the bodies of these apex predators.
Artist James Aldridge. They discussed James’ research into neurodiversity and queer ecologies #QueerRiver and how embodied practices that celebrate differences link to seeing other species as kin and as potential teachers, while exploring a fast-flowing Taunton edgeland habitat “full of life and litter”.
Neil Ogilvie, Flood and Coastal Manager for Somerset Council. They visited Longrun Meadow, the site for Taunton’s ambitious flood mitigation plans, and discussed the meaning of water in different cultures.
Follow @FeralPractice on Instagram for the latest updates on ‘Tonal’.
Funded via the newly opened Firepool Centre for Digital Innovation (FCDI) in Taunton, this bursary is supporting Feral Practice in developing innovative, sustainable, engaged ways of working.
Wellington-based artist Fiona MacDonald works with humans and nonhumans as Feral Practice to expand imaginative and cultural connection across species boundaries. Often people set up a divide between human and nonhuman beings, and between different categories of knowledge and understanding. Feral Practice works and converses across these barriers.
With the support of the FCDI bursary, Feral Practice seeks to work with local people and community groups to explore individual and societal issues by approaching them through a more-than-human lens.
feralpractice.com
@feralpractice
About the Firepool Centre for Digital Innovation
The Firepool Centre for Digital Innovation is a 2,493 square metre innovation facility in the heart of Taunton. The £11 million Centre is designed to drive innovation-led growth in the digital economy. It will provide digital and data led businesses the space, environment and support needed to help them grow.
The Centre is owned and operated by Somerset Council as part of a £40 million network of not-for-profit innovation centres across the county. These innovation centres support innovation in Somerset’s key growth sectors, raising productivity and creating high-value jobs in the local economy.
The capital funding for the construction and fit out of FCDI – including the artist’s bursary – was secured from the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund (£1.69 million), HM Government’s Getting Building Funding (£5.45 million), Growth Deal funding (£235k), Business Rates Retention Pilot funding (£250k), and Council capital funding (£3.6 million).