Wild Exchanges

From each project location in Fantastical Cambridgeshire we are inviting Wild Exchanges, introducing children’s ideas into the working realms of artists, architects, engineers, botanists, biologists, experts and enthusiasts of all kinds.  Recent collaborations with writers Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Kay began this process, and now we want to widen the range of voices responding to children’s discoveries.  Updates on these exchanges will be posted below.

CCI artist Deb Wilenski is working as the 'creative connector' for Wild Exchanges and will be posting regularly about the process here:

I am searching for particular images, words and ideas from the children’s work to offer to adult professionals in related fields - as source material for new work and as prompts to remember where their own fascinations began.  The invitations are very simple at the moment –  a few sketches, a single image, a poem to spark a response.  And the connections can be straightforward or complex, like different journeys on a map…’

Through these ‘conversations’ we expect to see our fantastical map of the county grow in unexpected ways, as each location becomes connected further and wider in the world.  And we continue to advocate for a fundamental right of children – to be recognised as makers as well as receivers of the creative culture around them.

Intriguing Wild Exchanges have been completed for our project with Eynesbury Primary School. Fascinating Wild Exchanges are currently underway with Offord Primary School, our second Fantastical Cambridgeshire project. Look out for more fantastical fascinations in our work with Round House Primary School which is starting soon.

A series of resources are also in production for others to use to explore their own wild exchanges with this work. These are supported by the Ernest Cook Trust and will be shared at the International Festival of Childhood in Bath (June/July) and at the University of Cambridge's Festival of Ideas in Cambridge (October).