- The Sign of the Underground – painting, digital and socially engaged commissions
The Sign of the Underground is an Arts Council England funded nature based visual artist commission program, produced by Salt Road for Herefordshire New Leaf Sustainability Ltd. Supported by the National Trust, Culture Declares Emergency and the Elmley Foundation in partnership with The Society of Underground Networks, Herefordshire Wildlife Trust, Greenhill gallery Berlin The nature of cities festival and the University of Amsterdam (mycorrhizal symbiosis and ethnobotanical research). The Sign of the Underground is an artist-led gathering of 4 areas of subterranean tendrils which includes:
- The latest earth crisis scientist research including the underground mycorrhizal network (that connects the roots of a plant with fungi).
- Biophilic (love of nature), deep/wild time, and ethnobotanical linkages to social and environmental justice.
- Linking these hidden pathways with what is underfoot in cities and towns, (pollution, pipes. cables, water).
- Connecting nature with underground grass roots eco-movements and marginalized communities
2. Krayina – socially engaged program and digital art commission
Jaime has been commissioned by New Leaf in partnership with Herefordshire Community Network for Ukraine, Herefordshire Council’s libraries, Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre and the University of Venice’s DiGE department (Ethnobotany of divided generations in the context of centralization). Krayina translates as home, country, one’s roots, but also a landscape, earth, countryside, and wilderness.
The Krayina project supports Ukrainian communities living in Herefordshire, England, with a nature and art socially engaged project. It engages with Ukrainians to reflect and builds on the needs and cultural context of people’s experiences. By creatively link people with the nature and landscape here, in a rural part of England, with ethnobotanical (the study of a region’s plants and their practical uses through traditional cultural knowledge) research and memories of landscapes in Ukraine, he is working with Ukrainian ethnobotanists through the University of Venice to create an archive of nature-based cultural information. DiGe (unive.it). The project will help in the understanding of obtaining, managing and perceiving of local natural resources, particularly plants, this research is crucial for ensuring sustainability of human life, as the use of plants is a key for survival of humans.
3. Digital Entanglements
Digital Entanglement is an Arts Council England funded collaborative biophilic (love of nature) visual digital artist commission by lead artist Jaime Jackson responding to the Ecological and Climate crisis. It is a collaborative project with a combination of nature-based socially engaged workshops and studio-based visual art practice will lead to the co-production of 3 digital Augmented Reality artworks in orchards and parks. Part of the Biophilic City Network and the Nature of Cities Festival, this project will enable engineer student collaborators to develop AR, LiDAR, ML and VR solutions with the artist in a real life context which will be exhibited in Art Galleries, parks and forest orchards.