As a town, Swindon is strongly connected to nature through renowned Victorian nature writer, Richard Jefferies. Born on a farm on the edge of Coate Water Park in 1848, Jefferies wrote extensively about the environment, the railway and town – a legacy which continues to live on at the Richard Jefferies Museum.
This year the Festival will be celebrating both Jefferies and his work with its first Richard Jefferies Lecture, when Dr Will Abberley, broadcaster, BBC New Generation Thinker, senior lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Sussex, and author of English Fiction and the Evolution of Language,will make a case for Richard Jefferies as a pioneer for modern nature writing.
Artist, Lucille Moore, will be teaching children the art of play in nature by making cardboard characters to hide among the rich and varied gardens of the Richard Jefferies Museum. Children ages five to ten will be free to explore both their talents and nature as they create and hunt Fugitives in the Garden.
Isabella Tree, award-winning author of Wilding, travel writer and manager of the Knepp Wildland Project, will be sharing her story of the re-wilding of an estate in West Sussex, a remarkable experiment which saw the restoration of nature from intensively farmed land by allowing nature the freedom to roam.
Mike Berners – Lee, author of There is No Planet B, professor and fellow of the Institute for Social Futures at Lancaster University, will be providing both hope and practical suggestions of how we too can engineer, and reverse change in our natural environments. There is No Planet B asks the questions about climate change, antibiotics and plastics, and then provides some answers.
And for one day only, the Spring Festival will take temporary residence at Swindon’s historical Lydiard Park with a Festival in the Park. This all day event will feature circus performers, dancers, storytellers, a poetry jukebox, acrobats to watch and take part in, plus activities from the Swindon Library and Information Service, The Literacy Trust and Create Studios.
Join us to find out why Jefferies was so connected to his surroundings, and how we can protect it for the future.
Tickets are available at www.swindonspringfestival.co.ukor follow the highlighted links.
