Collective Field Notebook - Festival of Nature 2023

Collective Field Notebook Festival of Nature

What is the Collective Field Notebook?

The Collective Field Notebook was produced following Festival of Nature’s summer riverside walk at Eastville Park in Bristol, immersing our creators in the lush environs of the River Frome..

Featuring creative activities including painting, drawing, writing and nature observation led by a collaboration of local artists and wildlife expert, the sketches, words and paintings produced on the walk make up this Collective Notebook. It is a place for you to celebrate, record and cherish the nature around you, not only in Bristol and the River Frome, but throughout the UK and even the world.

How can I use the notebook?

We encourage you to keep the Collective Field Notebook going by adding your own thoughts, reflections and sketches to its pages during your moments out in the nature and the natural world. What do you notice? How does it make you feel?

Add your words and drawings to this PDF digitally or print off the notebook at home.

With thanks to Festival of Nature and the Natural History Consortium Davina Quinlivan Dee Moxon Dan Rouse Contributors: Pip, Abby, Chris, Zoe, Hannah, Ursula.

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This project was made possible by Literature Works.

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Once the Frome crossed 13 bridges, all along its course, water fed the castle’s moat from St Stephen’s Street to Baldwin Street, before they bricked it up and laid a city on its surface, filled the water full of dust.

In Eastville Park, someone takes a photo of leaves making shadows on the asphalt, nature’s lightbox, scattered harmonies above our heads.

Our Voices are a River

Phones go near the smaller places, taller places, makeshift microscopes in our hands.

A child’s face in a thicket of trees, school children in the hills below, while dragonflies and beetles dip in and out of our vision, suspending time between the parting of their wings.

I hear a story of a river which flowed under the motorway, phantom liquid, life-giver, city-river, transports this community of voices to the park and the place where we walk today.

Someone answers their phone, or twirls a dog lead in their hands, or jogs past in pink trainers and a baseball cap.

‘Have you heard of any river myths?’

‘How can I paint that exact shade of green, a fallen leaf a single blade of grass?’.

‘Where do I meet you?

'Where do I sit?’

I carry my mother’s river inside me, the place she did not cross in Burma.

The river Exe and the river Thames, these are the ones I know the most.

My own mythology is made from these riverbeds, silted stories, marsh memories.

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At night, I will take off my shoes and this river will enter my house.

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Artwork credits Cover - Art by Pip Page 2 - Photos by Abby Page 3 - Art by Chris Page 4 - Art by Zoe Page 5 - Art by Zoe Page 6 - Art by Pip Page 7 - Art by Chris Page 8 - Art by Zoe & Chris writing by Davina Quinlivan Page 9 - Art by Zoe Page 10 - Art by Hannah Page 11 - Art by Ursula Page 12 - Art by Zoe Page 13 - Art by Hannah Page 14 - Photos by Abby Back cover - Art by Pip