Tipping Points: Cultural responses to wilding and land sharing in the North of England

《引爆点》被设想为AHRC资助的陆地线项目（2017 - 2019年）的第二个后续项目，该项目的主要目标之一是利用现代英国自然写作来刺激人们更多地参与自然世界。第一个续作是最近开始的，它利用的是我们看不到的自然，因为它大部分是隐藏的;第二个续作也利用我们看不到的自然，但在这种情况下，因为它不再与我们同在，或者还没有回来。在今天的英国，多达三分之一的哺乳动物和一半的鸟类面临灭绝的威胁，这主要是因为它们的栖息地已经被侵蚀到无法维持生存的地步。众所周知，这种临界点具有潜在的破坏性后果，但也有积极的例子。其中一个例子是各种所谓的"野化"或"再野化"倡议，通过这些倡议，英国的农业景观得到了创造性的管理，以鼓励野生动物的复苏。这样的恢复过程既是自然的，也是文化的，如果自然要以迫切需要的方式恢复，以维持我们自己以及其他非人类动物的存在，艺术在刺激对当前危机的创造性反应和想象自然世界的替代方式方面发挥着至关重要的作用。《引爆点》与其两个直接的前身一样，是一个以艺术为基础的项目，旨在提高公众对当前环境危机的认识，同时也干预当代保护倡议，如重新/野生化，为我们日益减少的自然世界带来更有希望的未来。更具体地说，该项目旨在利用创造性艺术来展示景观决策过程中的意义和价值，特别是农民，他们被许多保护主义者（和具有保护意识的自然作家）指责侵犯了理应由他们照顾的生物多样性。需要有一种更细致入微的观点，更包容地参与这种决策过程-因此，该项目以艺术为灵感，将不同的利益攸关方和社区聚集在一起：那些拥有和/或耕种土地的人;那些致力于土地可持续管理的人;以及那些在这方面的经验和知识并不总是得到充分沟通或充分分享的公众。《引爆点》建议围绕英格兰北部的三个地点--Wild Ennerdale、Castle霍华德庄园和Stirley社区农场--组织了一系列向公众开放的写作和视觉艺术研讨会，这些地点代表了不同规模和规模的再野化项目。在不同类型的自然和文化环境中运作，并为以艺术为基础的公众参与活动提供绝佳的机会，让同样广泛的参与者跨越社会构建的种族界限，性别和阶级这三个地点目前都面临着关于土地使用和管理的重大决定，它们都愿意将艺术和人文视角纳入这些决策过程，认识到这些视角及其激发的活动可能有助于接触那些否则可能不会参与农村和/或自然世界的人。在举办这些讲习班时，每个讲习班都由一位经验丰富的实地工作者领导，我们的目标是接触新的受众-例如英格兰北方的黑人、亚裔和少数族裔社区-他们的声音很少被听到，他们对自然的体验很少被考虑。我们还计划举办一个关于土地共享的大型研讨会，将农民，保护专家和人文学者/从业者聚集在一起，将寻求为土地管理实践创造共同点，其中景观被整体看待，围绕它们的决定根据创造性艺术的广泛民主要求开放。

Tipping Points is envisaged as a second follow-on from the AHRC-funded Land Lines project (2017-2019), one of the principal aims of which was to use modern British nature writing to stimulate greater engagement with the natural world. The first follow-on, which recently began, plays on the nature we cannot see because it is mostly hidden from us; the second one also plays on what we cannot see, but in this case because it is no longer with us, or has yet to return. In the UK today, up to a third of mammals and a half of birds are threatened with extinction, largely because their habitats have been eroded to the point where they are no longer able to sustain themselves. Such tipping points, as they are popularly known, have potentially devastating consequences, but there are also positive examples. One such example consists of the various so-called 'wilding' or 'rewilding' initiatives through which British agricultural landscapes are being creatively managed so as to encourage the resurgence of wildlife. Such restoration processes are as much cultural as they are natural, and if nature is to bounce back in ways that are urgently needed to sustain our own as well as other, non-human animals' existences, the arts have a crucial role to play in stimulating both creative responses to the current crisis and alternative ways of imagining the natural world.Tipping Points, like its two immediate predecessors, is an arts-based project that aims to raise public awareness of the current environmental crisis, but also to intervene in contemporary conservation initiatives, such as re/wilding, that posit a more hopeful future for our increasingly diminished natural world. More specifically, the project aims to use the creative arts to show the meanings and values at work in landscape decision-making processes in which farmers, in particular, stand accused by many conservationists (and conservation-minded nature writers) of violating the biodiversity that is supposedly in their care. A more nuanced view is needed than this, and more inclusive involvement in such decision-making processes - hence the project's arts-inspired gathering together of different stakeholders and communities: those who own and/or cultivate the land; those who are dedicated to its sustainable management; and those members of the public whose experience and knowledge of it is not always adequately communicated or sufficiently shared.Tipping Points proposes a series of open-to-the-public writing and visual arts workshops organized around three sites in the North of England - Wild Ennerdale, Castle Howard Estate, and Stirley Community Farm - that represent re/wilding projects of different sizes and scales that operate in different kinds of natural and cultural environments, and that provide excellent opportunities for arts-based public engagement activities involving an equally wide range of participants that cuts across socially constructed boundaries of race, gender, and class. All three sites currently face major decisions about the use and management of land, and all are open to the integration of arts and humanities perspectives into such decision-making processes, recognizing that such perspectives and the activities they inspire may help reach people who might not otherwise engage with the countryside and/or the natural world. In staging these workshops, each led by an experienced practitioner in the field, we aim to reach out to new audiences - e.g. BAME communities in northern England - whose voices are rarely heard and whose experiences of nature are rarely accounted for. We also aim to hold a major symposium on land sharing that, in bringing together farmers, conservation experts, and humanities scholars/practitioners, will look to create common ground for land management practices in which landscapes are viewed holistically and the decisions surrounding them are opened up in accordance with the broad democratic imperatives of the creative arts.