Summer School at Alice Holt Forest
📷 Group Photo by Shuoyang Zheng
It is difficult to summarise in a blog post how the summer school went. In short, it was an absolute blast!
A relevant link to how things went can be found in our Flickr gallery, with the photos taken by Shuoyang Zheng:
Next, I will briefly summarise the activities of the summer school, and what comes next.
Preparations - 17 and 18 June 2024
On Monday 17, Luigi, Pete and I arrived at Guildford, where the summer school accommodation was. We had a social meetup where Mike also joined at The Royal Oak and a team dinner at Zaitouna.
On Tuesday, 18 June 2024, we spend the day setting up Pete’s installation and Luigi’s streamers. We had a lunch meeting at the Alice Holt Café with the other team members (Danielle, Max, Jack, Mike, and Catrina).
In the evening, we met with the summer school attendees in Guildford (8 out of 10). We had a social meetup at The King’s Head Quarry Street and a dinner at Gordo’s. It was such a unique moment to get to meet everybody finally onsite!
Day 1 - 19 June 2024
We had a tight agenda. The morning started with a quick visit to the exhibition area in Willows Green Trail led by Pete.
Then, Luigi gave a hybrid keynote on “Arts, the forest, and tangential relationships” at the Alice Holt Activity Centre. The topic was very relevant to the artworks of the artists and set interesting questions to consider. We will publish the video of the keynote here soon. Apart from the summer school attendees and the Sensing the Forest Summer School team, there were 19 registered online attendees via our Eventbrite event!
After that, the summer school participants offered quick presentations on their projects, focusing on updates. Next, the summer school participants visited Forest Research led by Mike, to then met back at the Alice Holt Visitor Centre for lunch.
The afternoon was spent setting up the installations. At 3 pm, we offered a pre-launch walk and showcase for Forestry England staff members led by Pete. This was a nice way of getting ready to present the work to an audience, as well as to let the Forestry England staff what the exhibition was about.
In the evening, we met in Guildford. We had a social meetup at The White House and a dinner at Zizzi. We had lively conversations about the summer school and we shared the excitement for the official launch of the exhibition on the following day.
Day 2 - 20 June 2024
And the day arrived. In the morning, we first took the group photo that you can see at the top of the blog post. Then, there was some time for setting up. We had a beautiful opening presented by Hazel and Pete with all the group present that was live streamed. Then, time flew. We had visitors throughout the four hours (11am-3pm), and there was time for everybody to explore the exhibition as well and also have lunch at the Alice Holt Visitor Centre! We had about 40 people registered from our Eventbrite event.
The closing was quite intense. We had to say bye and pack/break down everything at the same time. All in all, it was fantastic to see all the work put together on a very special day. We were blessed to have such good weather for the three days.
What’s next
Although it felt like a big achievement, we still have lots to do! We are now working on the online gallery with photos, sound and text for each artwork. We want to continue the conversation with the artists so that we can include the visitors’ feedback. Pete’s installation will be relaunched at the beginning of August which is incorporating the feedback received from the visitors as well as technical and aesthetic improvements. Luigi is working on a more stable version of the streamers, which will be also launched in August. We are preparing documentation on the web client that connects to the data logger so that everyone can use it. We are also making a video about the summer school. More soon!
Acknowledgments
Thanks to all the visitors who attended the event. Thank you to Natalia Diaz Romero (University of Surrey) for her constant help with the accommodation, to Holly from the Alice Holt Café for the fantastic food, to Ian and Sam from Candy Tours for their drives from Guildford to Alice Holt Forest, and to Catrina James from Forest Research for helping with the data logger.
Special thanks to the Alice Holt Forestry England team for their generous support and to the summer school artists: Bardia Hafizi, Ed Chivers, Qianyi Rose Sun, Gabrielle Cerberville, Austin Blanton, Miles Scharff, Kate Anderson, Rosa Sungjoo Park, and Beccy Abraham.
Last but not least, thank you to the Sensing the Forest summer school team: Peter Batchelor (De Montfort University), Mike Bell (Forest Research), Max Gravestock (Forestry England), Danielle Grimsey (Forestry England), Johana Knowles (Forestry England), Luigi Marino (Queen Mary University of London), Hazel Stone (Forestry England), and Nick Wardlaw (Forestry England).