The Endangered Landscapes Artist Residencies
Photo: Volodymyr Goinyk
Eight residencies in landscape restoration projects in Europe
Accompanying individual awards of $3,150 and $5,400
Following completion of residencies, an additional prize of $2,500 to the most exceptional artist
The Endangered Landscapes Artist Residencies and Arts Prize
The Endangered Landscapes Artist Residencies and Arts Prize is a new collaboration between two programmes at the Cambridge Conservation Initiative: the Arts, Science and Conservation Programme and the Endangered Landscapes Programme. Both the ELP and ASCP are keen to encourage collaborative, interdisciplinary arts practice that celebrates the landscapes and communities supported by the ELP and that reveal the hopes, ambitions and opportunities that come with landscape restoration.
The arts and cultural practice are a powerful means of reawakening our sense of the familiar, connecting to the past, and exploring possible futures. They play a pivotal role in addressing environmental challenges and are a compelling route into understanding how people are connected to landscape. Art can often articulate emotional connections to a landscape in entirely new ways.
I think it is very affirming and encouraging to see art and culture regarded as an integral approach in regenerating landscapes and habitats, and a key part of the conservation programme. – Heather Ackroyd, Endangered Landscapes Artist Residencies judge.
Selected Artists
The Endangered Landscapes Artist Residency received proposals of exceptional quality in response to its call for proposals. We are grateful to all those artists who responded.
The judges have selected the following artists to undertake residencies in the ELP’s eight landscapes, and to compete for the additional prize which will be awarded to the most exceptional artist once the residencies have been completed.
More details on the artists and their projects will follow.
Robbie Synge in collaboration with Elizabeth Reeder & Amanda Thomson – Cairngorms Connect, Scotland, UK
Nico de Transilvania – Carpathian Mountains, Romania
Antony Lyons & Bárbara Carvalho – Greater Côa Valley, Portugal
Mathilde Fages & Raphaële Acquaviva – Danube Delta, Ukraine, Romania and Moldova
Volkan Hürsever – Gokova Bay to Cape Gelidonya, Turkey
Natela Grigalashvili – Iori River, Georgia
Oleksii Nahorniuk, Maksym Firsov, & Serhii Vusatii – Polesia, Belarus and Ukraine
TAIR Collective (Judith Musker Turner, Manon Awst & Beth Celyn) – Summit to Sea, Wales, UK
About The Residencies Programme
External judges
Heather Ackroyd
Heather Ackroyd, of Ackroyd & Harvey, has exhibited extensively in contemporary art galleries, museums, public spaces and sites of special interest both nationally and internationally. The artists give high profile keynotes and public presentations and contribute writings and photographs to books and journals.
Their multi-disciplinary work intersects art, activism, architecture, biology, ecology and history, and references memory and time, nature and culture. Anthropogenic climate change and biosphere degradation are key subjects in their practice interfacing their profound interest in local ecologies and global environmental concerns. In 2019, Ackroyd & Harvey co-founded Culture Declares Emergency in response to the climate and ecological emergency.
Tundi Agardy
Tundi Agardy is an internationally renowned expert in marine conservation, with extensive international field and policy experience. In 2001, shortly after founding the policy-science think tank Sound Seas, Tundi began thinking about how to recognize the value of natural ecosystems for humanity. This led to her involvement with the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), which in 2005 published the first global evaluation of the status of ecosystems in relation to human well-being. Tundi headed the coastal portion of this comprehensive assessment and was co-author of the summary document “Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Biodiversity Synthesis”. Since that time, she has worked on understanding ecosystem services and human perceptions of nature, in particular the important cultural services that serve as a motivator for so much of marine conservation, management, and restoration. She is a member of the Endangered Landscape Programme’s Oversight and Selection Panel.
Karen Thomas
Karen Thomas is the Community Officer at Kettle’s Yard, the University of Cambridge’s modern and contemporary art gallery. Karen works with artists, selected by the community, to explore local areas, collaborate with local residents and create new artwork together. Jim Ede, founder of Kettle’s Yard spoke about the everyday miracle of nature and many artists in the collection have been inspired by landscape, the environment and nature.
Karen joined Kettle’s Yard in 2013 and works with its collection and contemporary artists to develop engagement activities with communities in and around Cambridge. She has previously worked as part of the Learning team at Firstsite gallery in Colchester, in the project management team for arts research project Vital Communities, and most recently, as Arts Development Manager to South Cambridgeshire. Additionally, Karen is a trustee of arts and wellbeing charity Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination.