Join socially engaged artist Dana Olărescu and visual artist and activist Camille Aboudaram for the first part of two walkshops which will link up salt marshes, the climate crisis and advertisement. Both sessions will take place outdoors. Please wear comfortable shoes and dress appropriately. All ages welcome. You are encouraged to come to both walkshops but equally if you can only make one that is absolutely fine.
Salt marshes are coastal wetlands that are flooded and drained by the tides. They store carbon and prevent shorelines from damage by incoming waves. As we are experiencing the looming climate crisis, what can we learn from this unique habitat?
Join us for a meditative walk in the UK’s first nature reserve, where Dana will guide you through gentle art exercises, explore the connection between our bodies and the landscape, and we will collectively create messages that celebrate the salt marshes. These will later be translated into posters made for public space replacing harmful advertisements. We will be joined by Dr Clare Maynard and Dr Helena Simmons from Green Shores, a national saltmarsh restoration partnership, who will talk further about saltmarshes, natural coastal defences and other ecosystem services inherent to all marshes.
Dana Olărescu Working at the intersection of social design, installation, and performance, socially engaged artist Dana Olărescu focuses on challenging minority exclusion and environmental injustice.Through participatory methodologies that democratise access to art and knowledge, she aims to give agency to underserved migrant groups and people habitually excluded from decision-making processes, so they can become active co-producers of culture.
Camille Aboudaram is a visual artist, photographer and activist based between Paris and London. Often working with collage and text, she creates designs which are installed in place of advertising. She also leads workshops around poster-making, artivism and politics of public spaces and is the co-founder of London campaign group Adblock Lambeth, part of the national network Adfree Cities.
Dr Clare Maynard has been working on Saltmarsh restoration for over 20 years, based at St Andrews University and working with community partners while actively researching methods to best restore Scotland’s Atlantic Saltmarsh meadows which are under threat from sea level rise, changing land use and habitat destruction.
The Green Shores project continues thanks to recent funding from the Scottish Government’s Nature Restoration Fund managed by NatureScot and additional significant stakeholders. This funding has brought Dr Helena Simmons as Outreach Officer and Dr Haley Arnold as Conservation Officer into the project.
Clare and Helena also have Biodiversity roles at St Andrews University Eden Campus helping to advise and increase the biodiversity on the developing new university campus site.
Read more about the Deluge project here