Inside Out Dorset 2023 Set For September

Activate Performing Arts’ biennial outdoor arts festival, Inside Out Dorset returns in September 2023 when one group of festival performers will be going to great lengths to make their appearance as sustainable as possible. 

Dutch group Collectief Walden has transported the set for Songs for a Shifting Soil with sustainable shipping company KaapKargo, who rely on wind power rather than fossil fuel.  The ship, Ide Min, left Amsterdam on 21st July and took 3 days to arrive in Poole Harbour. The experience was a learning curve for Collectief Walden as they’d never attempted shipping internationally before. Once in Poole, the set was then transported to a storage shed in Bere Regis, where it will stay until it is needed for Inside Out Dorset. 

The International Maritime Organisation has stated that unless action is taken, CO2 emissions from the shipping industry could rise from 4% to 17% of global emissions by 2050. Sailing cargo ships like the Ide Min offer a sustainable alternative to traditional container ships, with a focus on reducing carbon emissions and pollution through wind propulsion technology. Whilst there were some hurdles to overcome, transporting the set by wind propulsion technology rather than fossil fuels, has been a great success. The set arrived safely and using sail power rather than air freight or regular shipping cargo transport systems has drastically reduced the carbon footprint for this show. 

Jaël Kaat, Creative Producer for Collectief Walden comments, It started off as a great adventure and we are super happy that the set arrived safe in Bere Regis. Lessons were learned in the sense that transporting by sailing ship to harbours is just too expensive for small theatre companies in the current system, mostly because boats and fees in harbours are designed for commercial goods and ships with lots of cargo and multiple containers.

Collectief Walden’s Songs for a Shifting Soil will be presented at Inside Out Dorset’s Wild Woodbury site at Bere Regis. The site is owned by Dorset Wildlife Trust and is undergoing a process of rewilding, providing a unique location for Inside Out Dorset to work with Dorset Wildlife Trust and Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). Collectief Walden aim to create an audience experience that is poetic, immersive and theatrical, telling real stories of how people relate to the natural world. In Songs for a Shifting Soil, they use word-for-word accounts of people who have interacted with Dorset’s soil in many different ways. The piece tells a story of reconnecting with the earth; reflecting the dramatic natural changes that Bere Regis will undergo in the years to come. 

Wilder Dorset Ranger for Dorset Wildlife Trust, Seb Haggett, comments Rewilding is all about restoring natural processes to a landscape, letting nature lead the way when restoring an area, all working to create a dynamic mosaic of habitats across an area, supporting a higher abundance and diversity of species. In the same way that Inside Out Dorset believe performing arts should be accessible for all, we at Wild Woodbury believe access to natural green spaces should be too, both of which people have been excluded from for many years. I hope the performances and setting will leave visitors feeling moved, and with a much stronger sense of place within Dorset and the local community.

Bere Regis will offer visitors further varied programming including Pravaas from Akademi, the leading producer of South Asian dance in the UK. This promenade performance is inspired by the climate migration of people from the Sundarbans across India and Bangladesh. Using traditional dance forms and bodies in outdoor spaces, Pravaas expresses feelings, ways of being, stories and imagery to convey how the climate crisis is directly changing the lives of communities of people. French artists De Chair et d’Os will present Five Seasons, a piece about rituals and our connection to the earth. A clay oven will be built as part of workshops with members of the public ahead of the performance days in September and the oven will be used during the performances as part of the ritual of foraging and sharing food. 

Bere Regis will also host Welly Walks created by PhD candidate and designer-researcher, Alice Stevens in collaboration with writer and storyteller, Zakiya McKenzie, and creative technologist, Mark Benson. Visitors will borrow wellies equipped with a speaker, a microcontroller and a sensor that detects weather conditions. The wellies play specific pre-recorded eco-poetry that relates to the weather. By combining wearable technology and eco-poetry, Welly Walks invites visitors to explore their relationship with the weather within the broader context of the climate emergency. Alice Stevens comments, There is so much we can learn from nature, and my visits to Wild Woodbury have been both inspiring and instrumental in the development of Welly Walks. The project invites people to reflect on their relationship with the weather. I hope that the event is a catalyst for shared experiences and conversations that foster a deeper connection with nature.

The climate emergency sits at the heart of events at Moors Valley Country Park and Forest, managed by Forestry England and Dorset Council. This 800-acre site caters for visitors of all ages and will see magical art installed through the site. Artmusic founder Helen Ottaway’s  Saeflod will adorn the woodland creating an immersive site-specific accompaniment to every visit. For the new commission, Saeflod, she collaborates with Rosie Jackson, a graduating student from Arts University Bournemouth. Ottaway comments, Saeflod is a new kind of Requiem. It takes the musical form outdoors, allowing it to move and change shape, to inhabit the landscape, flow through the forest. This could also be a description of sea rise and flood: seeping, surging overwhelming meadows, woodlands, villages and towns, changing the shape of the landscape. By 2050 parts of this country will be underwater. Whole towns may disappear. The rising sea will redraw coastlines and turn headlands into islands. As well as being a powerful force and a threat, water can cleanse and purify. Saeflod is about loss and change but also hope.

Much of the Inside Out Dorset programme takes place in natural landscapes, raising awareness of their environmental importance. Activate has cultivated relationships with Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and The National Association for AONBs, along with a set of European partners with complementary interests in the relationship between the landscape, artists, land stewards and the climate emergency. Activate’s planning ensures there is no negative environmental impact.

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