Life Cycles & Landscapes
Mandy Dike and Ben Rigby
Activate Performing Arts
An ambitious three-year project that ran from 2016-2019, Life Cycles & Landscapes was a partnership between Activate, producers of the Inside Out Dorset festival, artists And Now: and Landscapes for Life, the National Association for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. And Now: – artists Mandy Dike and Ben Rigby – created a major new landscape art commission, Wayfaring, at the heart of the project.
Here you will find various resources, a gallery of images, a book of essays Reflecting on Life Cycles and Landscapes/Wayfaring, some documentary videos and a series of creative videos drawn from the digital artwork that was created by And Now: Wayfaring was a journey of exploration, inspired by the present landscape and ancient routes of the Icknield Way; the series of artworks invited audiences to think about movement and migration; how we arrive at, understand, inhabit, and leave a space.
Wayfaring took place at a series of locations, each within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the UK, and in the Netherlands: the sites spoke of the opportunities and tensions present in the country today.
Using local materials and a travelling lightweight toolkit the artists spent a week on site creating installations that audiences could move through, investigate and contribute to. On the final evening, fire, music and performance transformed the installations with celebrations for everybody there to come together, their paths crossing at that one time at that one place.
Gallery
The project included a programme of residencies, creative labs and professional development for artists and university students, a series of conference presentations and a final seminar bringing together the landscape and heritage sectors, cultural producers and artists in September 2019.
“…moving, inspiring, spiritual, funny, subversive, beautiful, awesome…”
Tom Munro, Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
- 29,338 people engaged with Wayfaring between 2016 and 2018
- … including 2,478 school children, mental health service users and older people
- 234 volunteers took part, as performers and hosts
- 73 artists were involved, generating 956 days of artist employment
In this experience I saw things differently, I learned, I connected, I grew as a person and developed a feeling of belonging to my community.” Wayfaring Volunteer
“…we worked to create environments and experiences where artists and audiences could experience and connect together with the places where we all found ourselves… a compassionate understanding that people and all living things move at different speeds and ever have done.”
And Now: Mandy Dike and Ben Rigby
