This year, we are delighted to be collaborating with Phoebe Collings-James as Beaconsfield’s Environmental artist in residence. Phoebe has been working with ceramics and collective gathering to explore the multifaceted meanings of the term ‘sustainability’.
In Spring 2023 Beaconsfield joined the nationwide museum project, The Wild Escape, to develop our work with families and schools with a specific focus on Environmental awareness. Thanks to Museum Development London, we were able to extend the project into the Autumn and consolidate our relationships with Mudgang Pottery. Family Volunteering Group, Walnut Tree Walk Primary School, St Anne’s Primary School and Arcadia Missa.
The Wild Escape is made possible with support from Arts Council England’s National Lottery Project Grants, with additional support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, Kusuma Trust, Foyle Foundation and a group of generous individuals and trusts.
Look what we did online! And in person below …
Beaconsfield’s Wild Escape Events Autumn 2023
Autumn activities have taken inspiration from the international Guerrilla Gardening movement, where ordinary people take action to make their urban environments greener, cleaner and happier places to live. The link below tells the story of Black activists Hattie Carthan and Liz Christy who transformed parts of New York City from urban decay to urban oases and community gardens.
18 November 2023: Family Open Day 12-3pm.
Bring your family to collect the clay plant pot you made with Phoebe Collings-James in October (fired in the Mudgang Pottery kiln); make late Autumn seed bombs, seasonal decorations and other preparations for next Spring.
24 October 2023: Earth-reading with Phoebe Collings-James, , 6-8pm. 
Read, sculpt or play with terracotta clay while discussing extracts from the book ‘A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None’ by Kathryn Yusoff in the second in a series of reading groups with Beaconsfield’s Environmental Artist in Residence, Phoebe Collings-James. FREE but booking advised on Eventbrite.
14 October 2023: Family Volunteering and Open Day with horticulturalist Lucy Gregory and artist Minna Haukka 10am – 3pm.
Make Winter pine-cone bird feeders, plant bulbs for Spring, Autumn seed bombs or tend to the wormery and harvest some of its contents to mulch the pots; with horticulturalist Lucy Gregory.
13 October 2023: plant pots and seed bombs workshop.
Local primary school children make Terracotta plant pots and seed bombs with Phoebe Collings-James and Rachael Nilsson of Mudgang Pottery.
Beaconsfield’s Wild Escape Events Spring 2023
The Wild Escape campaign, highlights the importance of re-wilding our greenspaces with indigenous plants and animals and we have focussed on connecting the earth through clay. Children and their families have been helping to propogate vital pollinater plant species in Beaconsfield’s garden-yard with horticulturalist Lucy Gregory, as well as learning how to make a ceramic plant pot, with Phoebe Collings-James and Mudgang Pottery, to nurture plants at home.
The more academic aspects of Collings-James’ wider project are not suitable for young children, but our aim is not separate ‘dark’ subject matter from the birds and the bees, but to better understand how we are all bound into one ecology and to trigger that understanding from a young age.
31 May 2023: Phoebe Collings-James in conversation with Professor Kathryn Yusoff at 6.30pm.
A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (2019) is a text that proposes a nuanced and radical reading of the environmental crisis and our understandings of the geological age of the ‘Anthropocene’.
“Kathryn Yusoff examines how the grammar of geology is foundational to establishing the extractive economies of subjective life and the earth under colonialism and slavery.” University of Minnesota Press.
An edited transcript of this conversation can be read in the recent publication: The Subtle Rules the Dense, a series by Phoebe Collings-James (2023). Available from Arcadia Missa Publications: www.arcadiamissa.com
EARTH DAY 22 April 2023
TERRACOTTA POT COLLECTION from 12pm
Collect the fired terracotta plant pot you made at a previous workshop from the gallery, or email admin@beaconsfield.ltd.uk to make an appointment, and our gardener will help you find a plant to put in your pot, to grow at home on your windowsill or in your garden.
Reading Group with Phoebe Collings-James from 4pm
We celebrated world Earth Day by gathering in an adult reading group led by Phoebe Collings-James to consider an alternative view of our environmental crisis through reading a section of A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (2019) by Kathryn Yusoff, before Professor Yusoff’s visit to Beaconsfield.
The Wild Escape is the largest ever collaboration between UK Museums and Galleries
The Wild Escape is a major new project uniting hundreds of museums with schools and families to find nature in museums and galleries. Led by national art charity Art Fund and with support from Arts Council England, hundreds of museums, galleries and historic houses are coming together for the largest ever collaboration between UK museums.
Taking place from January to July 2023, The Wild Escape invites children to find a favourite animal in their local museum or gallery and create an artwork imagining its journey to a natural habitat. The objects, pictures and stories children create will be brought together in a collective work of art that imagines a better future for the wildlife on our doorstep, launched online and in museums on Earth Day 2023.
Beaconsfield events with Environmental Artist in Residence Phoebe Collings-James Spring 2023
As part of The Wild Escape Beaconsfield will be working with local families and school children to contribute to re-wilding Kennington and Vauxhall in March.
We will be learning to make terracotta plant pots with ceramic artist Phoebe Collings-James and Rachael Nilsson of Mud Gang Pottery Studio, while thinking about where clay comes from, the role that earth or clay plays in our ecologies, and learning about the importance of providing habitats for wild plants and animals with Lucy Gregory.
23 March 2023, all day
Local primary school children make Terracotta plant pots with Phoebe Collings-James and Rachael Nilsson.
See: Terracotta plant pots with Phoebe Collings-James and Rachael Nilsson
1 April 2023, 14:00 – 16:00
Morning: Family Volunteering Club help to rewild the Beaconsfield garden yard with artist Phoebe Collings-James, potter Rachael Nilsson and horticulturalist Lucy Gregory: planting pollinator wild flowers and making clay seed bombs, bug hotels and thumb pots. Fully booked.
Afternoon family drop in: an open invitation to make your own terracotta plant pot, seed bomb or bug hotel with Rachael Nilsson and Lucy Gregory Book on Eventbrite here.
22 April 2023, World Earth Day
12:00 – 17:00
Collect your fired pot and wildflower to grow at home.
15:00 – 16:00
Reading group with Phoebe Collings-James: A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None by Kathryn Yusoff.
‘Kathryn Yusoff examines how the grammar of geology is foundational to establishing the extractive economies of subjective life and the earth under colonialism and slavery. University of Minnesota Press.
Book on Eventbrite here
31 May 2023, 18:30
Phoebe Collings-James in conversation with Professor Kathryn Yusoff about her book A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (2019)
“A historically grounded and embodied understanding of geological transformation.” —Antipode
Book on Eventbrite here
8 July 2023, 10:00 – 11:30
Join the Family Volunteering Club for a morning of gardening fun, helping to rewild the Beaconsfield garden yard with horticulturalist Lucy Gregory: making a wormery, bug hotels, weed the yard, and other gardening tasks which are helping insects and plants in the gallery garden yard to flourish. Book via Family Volunteering Club here
The Wild Escape is an opportunity to join the urgent conversation about climate crisis and biodiversity loss and look for nature positive solutions, in partnership with leading environmental charities the RSPB and WWF and cultural organisations National Trust and English Heritage.
The Wild Escape is inspired by Wild Isles, a landmark BBC series exploring the flora and fauna of the UK.
Jenny Waldman, Director, Art Fund, said:
“I’m thrilled that Beaconsfield is joining hundreds of organisations from the Outer Hebrides to Folkestone to connect thousands of children with the natural world through the UK’s truly great museums and galleries. Thanks to the invaluable support of Arts Council England, the Wild Escape will empower families and children across the UK to visit and discover our wonderful museums, whilst taking positive action to picture a better future for our wildlife.”
About Art Fund
Art Fund is the national fundraising charity for art. It provides millions of pounds every year to help museums to acquire and share works of art across the UK, further the professional development of their curators, and inspire more people to visit and enjoy their public programmes. Art Fund is independently funded, supported by Art Partners, donors, trusts and foundations and the 130,000 members who buy the National Art Pass, who enjoy free entry to over 240 museums, galleries and historic places, 50% off major exhibitions, and receive Art Quarterly magazine. Art Fund also supports museums through its annual prize, Art Fund Museum of the Year. The winner of Art Fund Museum of the Year 2022 is Horniman Museums & Gardens.
