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

《引爆点》被设想为AHRC资助的陆上线路项目(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。最近开始的第一部续集，讲述了我们看不见的自然，因为它大多隐藏在我们面前；第二部也播放我们看不到的东西，但在这种情况下，因为它不再与我们在一起，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，很大程度上是因为它们的栖息地已经被侵蚀到无法再维持生存的地步。众所周知，这些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“野生”或“重新野生”倡议，通过这些倡议，英国的农业景观正在得到创造性的管理，以鼓励野生动物的复兴。这样的修复过程既是自然的，也是文化的，如果自然要以维持我们自己和其他非人类动物生存所急需的方式恢复，艺术在激发对当前危机的创造性反应和想象自然世界的其他方式方面发挥着至关重要的作用。像它的两个前身一样，Tipping Points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，但也要干预当代的保护倡议，如重新/野生保护，这些倡议为我们日益减少的自然世界赋予了一个更有希望的未来。更具体地说，该项目旨在用创造性的艺术来展示景观决策过程中发挥作用的意义和价值，在这个过程中，农民尤其是被许多自然保护者(和具有保护意识的自然作家)指责破坏了理应由他们照顾的生物多样性。需要一种比这更微妙的观点，并更包容地参与到这种决策过程中--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；引爆点建议围绕英格兰北部的三个地点-Wild Ennerdale、Castle Howard Estate和Stirley社区农场-组织一系列向公众开放的写作和视觉艺术研讨会，这些地点代表着在不同类型的自然和文化环境中运作的不同规模和规模的重新/野生项目，并为基于艺术的公共参与活动提供极好的机会，这些活动涉及同样广泛的参与者，跨越社会构建的种族、性别和阶级的界限。这三个遗址目前都面临着关于土地使用和管理的重大决策，而且都愿意将艺术和人文的观点融入到这样的决策过程中，认识到这样的观点及其激发的活动可能有助于接触到那些本来可能不会接触到农村和/或自然界的人。通过举办这些研讨会，每个研讨会都由一名经验丰富的现场实践者领导，我们的目标是接触到新的受众--例如英格兰北部的BAME社区--他们的声音很少被听到，他们的自然经历也很少被考虑到。我们还打算举办一次关于土地共享的大型研讨会，通过将农民、保护专家和人文学者/实践者聚集在一起，寻求为土地管理实践创造共同点，在这些实践中，景观被整体看待，围绕景观的决定是按照创作艺术的广泛民主要求开放的。

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.