Folk Projects are working with a number of community groups in the area, including students at the University of Essex.
Brought together by Creating Change – a community group who find out what matters in the local context by talking to people and turning those discussions into action – they discovered that 49,000 miles of historic footpaths have disappeared in Britain. These paths are a vital part of our heritage, describing how people have travelled over the centuries within their communities and beyond. Yet, if they are not claimed for inclusion in the definitive map (the legal record of rights of way) by January 2026, we risk losing them forever. Post-lockdown, it is vital that we retain the newfound love of walking it engendered – and create better walking routes to enable everyone to explore our country on foot.
Rosie Pedlow and Joe King will walk with local community groups to reinstate a historic walk that has been lost. The artists will create artworks inspired by this process, as they make a permanent change to the East Anglian landscape by opening up a new walk for all.
Their work will be on show at Art Exchange in 2022.
About the artists
Folk Projects are Joe King and Rosie Pedlow, two British artists working across a range of media including moving image, animation, film, photography and installation. Their work takes in a wide range of interests and themes ranging from the rhythmic combination of image and sound to modes of representation, and, more latterly, to notions of dwelling, place, space, time, repetition and the everyday.
Their work has been shown internationally in galleries, cinemas and theatres, at festivals, on television and even in the middle of the woods. Recently, they embarked on an exciting collaboration with the band Tindersticks for their new album and series of cine-concerts, ‘The Waiting Room’.
They have received production awards from Arts Council England, Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network, FLAMIN, in association with BBC Radio, Wellcome Trust, S4C/SGRIN in association with Arts Council of Wales and animate! in association with Channel 4. And they have received prizes and nominations including the inaugural Jerwood Moving Image Award, UK (2008) and from festivals including SXSW Film Festival, USA (2006), Ann Arbor Film Festival, USA (2006), Festival du Nouveau Cinema, Montreal (2006), 25fps Film Festival, Croatia (2006).
Background on the project
This project is part of the Arts Council funded project New Histories R&D. Working across the region, locally based artists have been invited to work with community groups to uncover un-celebrated stories, decolonise regional histories and highlight untold contemporary perspectives in the East of England.