Weaving a Tale

A beautiful, intricate birds nest found on the grass in Blean churchyard.

 (...woven by a beak!)

The Salt-way Tales, a start...

My MA final project is about revealing the Salt Way as a significant trading route of the past and a place which we can still visit today to reconnect with the landscape around us.

I want people to find and explore the route easily. I have looked at how to mark the way by various means. There are two ways that I shall do this through a way-marking system. The first one is to place a series of site specific artworks along a section of the route that celebrate the process of salt-making itself. The second series of way-markers are of a more standard design.

Another way to encourage users to the path is to create a 'Storywalk', this is a means of engaging people with the path and their immediate environment by producing a story that is geo-located to a specific walk. This 'site-specific digital tale' can be viewed on a hand held device such as a smart phone or I-Pad.

Luckily, I know an award winning storyteller who has created a system himself to do this and is willing to help me.

I like the idea that this is another layering of meaning onto the landscape, but is produced without physically putting anything 'on the ground'. It leaves no trace in the landscape, only creating a memory path of the experience in the users imagination. Christopher Jelley lives in Somerset and is busy working on various Storywalk projects at a time. Find out more at Storywalks

I have sent over the bare bones of my Storywalk idea to him. The walk starts at Blean Church, just over halfway between Whitstable and Canterbury.

   Blean Churchyard looking out onto the Salt Way

It was here recently that I found on the grass a beautiful nest that had fallen from the tree above. My sons and I looked at the intricacy of the nest and wondered how birds could do this with their beaks. I would struggle to make anything half as lovely with my hands. The moss, sheeps wool, fine grasses, lichen, feathers and tiny twigs were woven round and around to form a tightly packed nest.

Detail of the nest

Looking back at my photos of this nest today as I was preparing the many photographs I had of the route to send Chris, I was struck by its beauty and the wonder of its creation.

As I sat at the computer trying to type Chris a basic explanation of my ideas for the Storywalk I recognised that this was how stories are made. A plan has to be made, 'ingredients' have to be found or discovered and then woven together to create a thing of wonder. Now when I think about the bare bones of my story, the plan is to bring a wise woman from Winchester along the Pilgrims way to Canterbury then up the Salt Way, past Blean church and out to the coast. The 'ingredients' include holy-water and salt!

 

An information board at the church. The church is dedicated to St. Cosmus and St. Damian, patrons saints of physicians and surgeons, (there are only 5 churches in the UK dedicated to these saints.)

Chris said he would work with my ideas and produce a story. I know he is an expert weaver of tales and hope that some of my ideas will inspire a tale that will be a joy to discover.