Image: Pastoral Malaise (2022), dir Ufuoma Ess

Shieldfield Grows Winter Programme

Film screening and dinner at Shieldfield Art Works

In the first Shieldfield Grows gathering of the year we will watching part of 'Right of Way' which is a documentary about our right to roam in the countryside and if this applies to everyone equally. We will also start planning the upcoming growing season together. There will be hot soup and bread provided on arrival and time for Shieldfield Growers to catch up.

We’ll be watching extracts from the film collection together. (The total film running time is 90 mins. More info below.)

Part of Shieldfield Grows, a programme of activity that seeks to promote sustainable food production, fair land usage and community flourishing, developed as a collaboration between Dwellbeing Shieldfield and Shieldfield Art Works.

We’re told we all have a right to roam in the countryside – but does that apply to everyone equally?

Right of Way is a new feature-length programme that mixes stunning new artists’ commissions with historical archive films that give a bigger picture of questions of access and inclusion in the UK countryside. This programme is presented by the ICO and LUX and supported by the BFI Film Audience Network and Arts Council England. 

It’s inspired by the foundation of the National Trails. Set up to resist sweeping industrialisation, these protected landscapes were created with a vision to ‘connect people to the rural landscape’. But during the COVID-19 pandemic – as people realised anew the importance of nature and open spaces for our health and mental wellbeing – inequalities of access to rural land were being exposed, revealing the disconnect felt by millions of people towards the UK countryside. A 2019 government review found that many Black, Asian and ethnically diverse people view the countryside as an ‘irrelevant white, middle-class club’, concluding that this divide is only going to widen as society changes and ‘the countryside will end up being irrelevant to the country that actually exists’.

The new commissions interrupt and challenge the enduring perception of the rural idyll as an untouched and unchanging space where time stands still. What happens when Black, Asian and other ethnically diverse people enter these landscapes? How can our natural spaces be homes to protest, trespassing, activism and raves? Paired with archive films that show that the life of the countryside contains multitudes and disrupt simple narratives, this programme is a terrific platform for debate on historical and contemporary discussions about who has a right to the great outdoors and who is excluded from it.