The Rivers and Skies

The Granary, National Trust Flatford
24-30 August, 11am-3pm

As part of the National Trust’s Constable 250 season, join artists Tom Hobden and Phoebe Stapleton as they celebrate John Constable in an immersive, multi-senory experience. Be inspired by projections, soundscapes and visual design.

The exhibition is the culmination of Tom and Phoebe’s creative commission that celebrates the 250th anniversary of John Constable’s birth, a partnership between the National Trust in Flatford and Essex Cultural Diversity Project.

For Constable 250, we invited creatives to propose a project that explored routes to ‘Becoming Constable’, which would celebrate the painter’s life and work through his inspirations and experiences, and encourage people to find belonging in Flatford and in their own landscapes. We asked artists to draw out how our interaction with a place can help define us and forge our identity, especially in our early years.

Over the last few weeks the artists have been working with diverse audiences from across the generations to tell or imagine their life stories through the metaphors of rivers and sky, drawing a parallel with John Constable’s way of seeing landscape as an emotional record. Through a series of community creative workshops, the project will metaphorically connect the morphology of rivers to the journeys of our lives and explore how John Constable’s skies can create the capacity to hold our emotions and future dreams.

The artists have transformed these stories into an immersive, multi-sensory installation at Flatford; a patchwork of projections, soundscape, and immersive visual design becoming a bridge between two worlds, and a connecting message of the significance of who we are, where we live and how we create. The project invites us to see ourselves and our communities as part of an ongoing artistic terrain where personal histories are held, remembered, and elevated.

• Venue: The Granary, Flatford, East Bergholt, Suffolk, CO7 6UL
• Free event, drop in anytime throughout the day, no booking required
• Please note that there is a fee for the car park (£6 for cars)
• https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/suffolk/flatford/things-to-see-and-do-at-flatford

The Rivers and Skies is made possible through a co-commission from the National Trust, and Essex Cultural Diversity Project supported by Arts Council England.