Richard Keating

Meeting with Ali Coles, Seb Buckton, Alice Goodenough and Jackie Townley about ‘Good from Woods’ research project, looking at the well being benefits from Folly Wood membership.

Gave presentation to Cheltenham U3A philosophy group – a lively group discussion ensued and it was useful to be reminded of the precise focus I am developing and conversely, of all the lose ends that the research can’t tie in.

The group agreed to add their own individual comments to the text I had read from and circulated – it will be interesting to see this assemblage in due course…

A lovely dry day, ideal for coppicing.

Cut, collected, sized hazel, ash, oak and beech sticks. Put to dry.

Attachments

for-jaqui-2-1364040708.doc

catching-up, planning and arranging project meetings

minor amends for Watery Landscapes article

Reading for thesis

Unlike the walk on Friday, I did chair the meeting despite grieving.
Directors and activity plans for next year agreed.

Attachments

second-draft-action-plan-2013-201-1363950967.doc

Feeling very distracted and else where. Kel Portman led a circular walk from Bussage.
It was interesting to be a participant.
Made one drawing compiled of layered drawings along the route.

8th til end of month

Dad’s illness, death, funeral and celebration of life

27th to 5th February

meeting about Stroud Nature Consortium organised with Steve Roberts

meeting to develop proposal for ‘Good from Woods’ research into Folly Wood with Seb Buckton, Ali Coles and Jackie Rowanly

First Friday Walk around Chalford

Vision 21 meeting in Cold Aston with Julia Bennett, Alison Parfitt, Sue Porter, Diana Ray and Jaqui Taylor

Thesis synopsis circulated to Tutors

Due to the snow and underlying mud, two walks were needed to plan a route for February’s first Friday walk.
Planning SITE13 events and promotions with Kel Portman.

Meeting with Greg Pilley at Stroud Brewery to discuss holding a ‘River’ exhibition and community discussion at the Brewery

Preparing for Folly Wood AGM and activity day. In the end I couldn’t go to the activity day as I went instead to Denys Hodson’s funeral. Denys had been a visionary director while I was working in Swindon and also vice chair of the Arts Council. In recent years he had fund raised for the medieval windows in Fairford Church. A great ally and mentor.

10th to 24th
mainly reading and writing. Rather than using writing as a creative (and messy and long) process, this has been a more planful way of writing. I anticipate that its just a means of creating a framework in which I can be messy and freer.

Other ongoing work has included developing the programme for a Spring Green Conference, developing a consortium for the Festival of Nature and preparing a funding bid for ‘River’.

Harvesting wood for Animated Walking Sticks – as a part of the ethos of managing woodland, I’ve coppiced some hazel and put to dry. This will be drawn on in due course – once I’ve made a machine on which to do it. ‘Stick’ is an old term for a book chapter as scrolls were kept wound around them in manageable lengths. The intention is to develop this metaphor by combining sticks and newer technology.

rest of week re-considering writing (and usual planning/servicing of community events)

Trying to find a more structured approach to reading and note taking. Much has been done, making use of the internet from which I now have bought a number of key texts that I want to study more thoroughly. (Putting this into practice, I still find a need to visit newly discovered texts on the internet).

Produced a different diagram of thesis structure. What goes where still seems too fluid.

As to central question, I feel I have a grasp on it and then it morphs –

• Are the various engagements the materials/genre and the process, in which case what were the outcomes and how to measure them? Perhaps who to measure them?
• Are the various engagements context for the research which is actually about developing the practice which can enable/engage? In which case how would it be judged? What are the criteria beyond my own initial ones?
• Can it be both? Is such an integration core to my ontology?
• In which case does the practice include a constant research element into itself and how could such research be measured or even known?
• Is it a matter of emphasis – so, for example, more about researching the development of an arts practice through a particular methodology which holds the understanding of what “it all means” than about the engagement findings such as 10 people did this, twenty did that – so how to measure the outputs?
• How would having something in the museum help – it would make the outcomes disseminated knowledge about the place and its people – anthropology? So is the work auto/relational/ethnoggraphy?
• How would this relate to a/r/tography?