Shape of the Cairngorms
Robbie Synge, Elizabeth Reeder and Amanda Thomson’s artist residency in the Cairngorms, Scotland.
Robbie Synge works with physical movement and interactions between people and materials, with collaborators of diverse backgrounds and interests and presenting in theatres, galleries and outdoor spaces. Recent work includes short film ‘Forest Floor’ (2019) shot in Abernethy Forest with collaborator Julie Cleves, exploring landscape access challenges. Synge has worked with, amongst others, the BBC, LUX Scotland and Siobhan Davies Dance.
Elizabeth Reeder is a writer whose novel ‘An Archive of Happiness’, was longlisted for the Highland Book Prize (2021). Her work explores ideas of identity, community, home and place. She runs workshops on a range of subjects and is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow.
Amanda Thomson is an interdisciplinary artist and writer. Her artwork and creative non-fiction are often about the Highlands and notions of home, movements, migrations, landscapes and the natural world. Her doctoral studies included fieldwork with the RSPB in Abernethy Forest. She lectures at Glasgow School of Art and is author of ‘A Scots Dictionary of Nature’.
About the Residency
The Cairngorms is one of the most important ecological landscapes in the United Kingdom, home to Caledonian pine forests, peatlands, wetlands and upland habitats. Cairngorms Connect is working towards a 200-year vision to restore native woodlands, rebuild ecological processes and support thriving communities across a large connected area.
For their residency, Synge, Reeder and Thomson came together to explore how restoration is understood, experienced and felt by the people who live and work here. Their approach has centred on investigation, gathering, listening and sharing perspectives, drawing on their individual disciplines to present the landscape from multiple angles.
Learning with ecologists and field teams
Much of the residency has involved spending time with conservationists, volunteers and scientists in the field. The artists joined practical restoration activities such as moth trapping, seed collecting, willow planting and monitoring work on peatland restoration sites.
Synge’s background in physiology and movement shaped his response to this work. He followed footprints, set infrared camera traps and observed how people and wildlife move through the same place. He describes this process as “digital foraging”, using the camera trap as both a tool for learning and a way of understanding the shared rhythms of the forest.
During an overnight moth survey on a mountain, the team witnessed how indicator species reveal the health of habitats. Scenes from this work inspired new ideas for choreography, sound and film. As Amanda Thomson observed, moth traps demonstrate “a healthy environment”, yet the species they attract often go unseen. This encounter became a way to help audiences appreciate the beauty and importance of these small creatures.
Exploring community relationships with the landscape
Alongside fieldwork, the artists collaborated with local communities, schools and volunteers. Workshops in Abernethy Forest and nearby village halls encouraged participants to explore the landscape through sensory exercises, photography and writing.
Reeder and Thomson led creative sessions that brought ecological ideas into familiar places, helping people reflect on how they see and understand their local environment. The workshops supported participants to explore identity, belonging and landscape pride. As Reeder noted, “People love this place, and love is an excellent motivator for action, change and hope.”
Synge co-delivered Nature Creatives, an intensive programme for primary school children combining movement, sound, and natural history. This work later developed into a short film, All of Us, made with the children and inspired by the behaviour of local bird species and other wildlife.
Art, movement and the more-than-human
Synge and long-term collaborator Julie Cleves used simple, improvised devices to explore access barriers in the landscape, questioning who can enter certain places and how movement shapes our experience of nature. Their work highlights practical and symbolic challenges around mobility, participation and shared space, particularly in conservation contexts.
Through these experiments, the artists examined how humans and other species coexist, and how creative practice can reveal new forms of attention. Observing standing deadwood, watching how animals interact with camera traps and sensing the forest’s textures offered insights into the complexity of the Cairngorms’ habitats.
For the artists, these experiences sit alongside their understanding of restoration: that ecological recovery requires care, time and long-term commitment from both people and institutions.
All of Us
Synge created a short film All of Us with the collaboration of five primary school children through their participation in ‘Nature Creatives’. Working from a starting point of the perspectives of the non-human inhabitants of local woodland, they observed and discussed the living creatures of the place in parallel to experiments in dance and embodiment.
A collective body of work
Across the residency, the artists’ practices have woven together. Performances, prints, images, writing, sound recordings and community events have emerged from their shared encounters. Their work explores “the poetics” of conservation, offering new ways to understand the Cairngorms beyond data alone.
The residency has also inspired the creation of a Commonplace Book for the Cairngorms. Led by Reeder and Thomson, this collaborative collection gathers stories, drawings, observations and memories contributed by people who live, work and spend time in the area. Its companion piece, the Cairngorms Kist, holds these submissions within a handwoven container, offering a snapshot of the landscape’s complexity at this point in time.
The Kist and Book form an invitation for future generations to continue documenting how people see and relate to this evolving place.
Visit the project page to learn more about Cairngorms Connect.
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