Florilegium, A Gathering of Flowers 

Walking and creating stories with GOLD project group members .

A window installation at 215 217 Northdown Rd . Margate for POW Thanet 2020.

The installation will be in place for the whole of March.

1. 
   
2. This project takes its inspiration from Foreligium, a diary shared between communities that are interested in flowers. Floreligium can be translated literally as "a gathering of flowers". It contains scraps of writing, drawing and collage that have been shared amongst the community and those who are new to it. They discuss the discovery of new specimens, the best spots to see a rarity and other fanatical stories.

Our project began with a walk at the Garden Gate in Margate in January led through Thread and Word.

 Unravelling a ribbon with a line from the poem Thread and Word written by Cecilia Vicuña. 

We walked around the garden and  read lines from the  poem Hilo y Palabra by Cecilia Vicuña and through walking reading and talking we gathered our ideas.

We made rope.

             

We created

This was followed by fortnightly workshops at GOLD led by local artists. The members of GOLD projects experimented with techniques and  materials.

Fab display boxes made by George Harding and Georgia May Jaeckle

Some careful curation in March

A celebration  

We hope you have time to visit!

A project delivered through Well Projects and GOLD Project  in Margate supported by POW Thanet 

A walk in July 

A collaborative walk on July 12th with the Garden Gate Community Project and Walking with The Waste Land in Cliftonville, Margate.

A photo diary of a series of walks which we began in April. this is our fourth walk.

July seems to be the month for fruit and vegetables at the Garden Gate.

okra or ladies fingers

A pumpkin patch

Strange creatures

For our walk we took inspiration from ‘Precario’ (precarious) #ThreadandWord a walk in Edinburgh from Dundas street gallery to Inverleith house ( you can check this out in the previous blog entry:http://elspethpenfold.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/precario-1990-cecilia-vicuna-maximum.html

This multifaceted work addresses the pressing concerns of the modern world; ecological destruction, human rights and cultural homogenisation. Cecilia Vicuña's works often begin as poems, before transforming into images, films, songs, sculptures or collective performances - “hearing an ancient silence waiting to be heard”

Documenting the precarious nature of existence and the strength in fragility through our hand made ropes. 

At the start of our July  walk I suggested we use ropes to gather found sticks, flowers and leaves   while we walked. As always the inventiveness and creativity of my fellow walkers is wonderful. 

  For more about ropes and how these fit in  with the walks please visit:  

http://elspethpenfold.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/fragments-and-thoughts-explanation-and_14.html 

and so we walked;

                                                                                
















Dahlias at North down Park House  

A lovely path through the woods for a wander.

           

A record of this our July walk. I hope you can join us next time for our walk on August 2nd at 2pm. 

Walking with ‘The Waste Land’ is a community group founded by artist Elspeth Penfold in 2014. The group use walking as a research tool for locating TS Eliot’s The Waste Land and selected other poems in Margate. The group works closely with Turner Contemporary’s Waste Land Research Group who are developing Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’, Turner Contemporary’s first major exhibition of 2018, which will be on show from 3^rd February – 20^th May 2018, focused on connections between Eliot’s poem and the visual arts.