Beacon Wood – (Grid Ref: 413298)

Situated in the Northern corner of Sancreed Beacon, Beacon wood originally started out as a piece of disused land overgrown with brambles and bracken. Local tree warden Tony Hole began helping the regeneration of the land by planting native tree species on there in the mid 1980’s with the verbal consent of the Land owners Cornwall Heritage Trust (CHT).

One thing we need in Cornwall is more trees! Centuries of gradual deforestation and little replanting have severely depleted the tree covearge in this part of West Cornwall. In my opinion they are a necessary and largely understocked resource, so every patch of woodland becomes very precious.

However, things are never that simple and since the early 2000’s the area has been designated an area of Lowland Heathland, and English Nature pay the CHT an annual maintenance fee to maintain it as such.

As an area of Lowland Heathland one course of action the CHT could take is to uproot any trees!!! So, Tony and I met representatives of English Nature and CHT to discuss this in March 2009. The outcome of that meeting was that CHT agreed to take the 6 – 7 acres of woodland already planted out of the Lowland Heathland scheme, letting the community have the area as a woodland, if the community would help upkeep the Beacon. This they then put in writing to the parish Council.

Ecoventions

(Ecovention = Ecology + Invention), a term coined by Sue spaid in 2002 to describe artist initiated projects that employ an inventive strategy to physically transform a local ecology.

As such, the artworks exist outside a gallery context and the audience consists of the people who visit, live or participate in them. Therefore, the documentation for such projects I feel does not sit well in the gallery context so, I thought “How about a Blog…?”