Performing Wild Geographies

This project is a cross-disciplinary encounter with Britain’s ‘wild geographies’. Our focus is a creative exploration of time-dependent elements of habitat change in the context of rewilding initiatives. By engaging various publics in an enhanced scientific understanding of environmental change in urban and rural environments, we will host a series of events that prompt participants towards performative interventions in the British landscape. This collaboration brings artistic and scientific research together to reshape the imaginaries of conservation. It considers the efficacy of Performing Arts in enhancing public engagement with Quaternary Science, and applies specialist scientific knowledge to the development of site-based performance practice. Our proposal is that an enhanced understanding of Quaternary history (the last 2.6 million years), along with a creative sensibility to possible futures in wildlife conservation, can have a significant impact on the way that present publics engage with concepts of wildness and wilderness.