THE ALLOTMENTS
Allotments are some of the last free places in the UK to be truly autonomous - where different rules seem to apply, and where wisdom is shared freely.. These places of quiet revolution are where seeds of hope and self-sufficiency are sown.
Shangri-La is fertile ground, and The Wilding’s Allotments are a contemporary take on shared communal space, featuring live performance and installations from 20 multi disciplinary artists and activists.
The 12 allotments include The Anarchist Gardeners Club, by Black Lodge Press, where growing a garden is a radical act, and Fieldworks, a communal space inspired by crop circles by the artist-technologist Coral Manton and Shangri-La has created the Palestine Solidarity Garden and the Beanfield 40 Year Memorial
Tat Vision’s Teleshrubbies is a surreal, mobile installation that explores our relationship with nature through play, and The Meadow of Possibilities is a wild intervention and quiet installation experience, created by Rachael Taylor in the form of a mini meadow.
Foka Wolf and Reel News’s rewilded urban landscape evokes the historic battle for the commons. The Hive, by Meg Lane, Paula Palazon and Maria Wiecko, is a visual tribute to the bee, the importance of communal living and a call to action to rewild our cities.
The Bed of Nettle is an installation by Andy Doig, and Return to Earth by Lizzie French and Lorcan Staniland is an immersive living sculpture that reflects on the process of death and decay.
a-n and Shangri-La have teamed up once more to invite talented, up and coming artists who have never shown at a festival to create a bespoke work for the field.Slave Song, an allotment by Rider Shafique, is a response to some of the earliest written interpretations of songs used by enslaved peoples labouring on plantations in the Caribbean, whilst Grow Up by India Rafiqi is a living piece of graffiti.