PaC: a commons of exchange and support

PaC is a peer group for artists, set up by artist Laura Eldret in 2019, as one element of More Than Ponies “a roaming art programme for/about the New Forest and surrounding areas” which Laura founded when she moved back to the south coast from London.

Touching the landscape steadily like a beating drum. Walking. Walking gently. Walking as a way of thinking. Walking as a way of feeling. Feeling through my whole body. In steady rhythms. Sometimes when I walk, I can think and speak clearly.
- excerpt from Gemma Gore My throat is full of forgetting

The group was, in its first incarnation, People + Place (PaP), and was supported by Southampton arts organisation 'a space arts'. I was running the ‘a space’ Artist Development programme at the time and a strong need for supportive peer networks had been identified by conversations with the artist community. Laura responded to our open call with her plans for a group which would meet monthly, bringing together an intentionally diverse group of artists to meet and walk in the New Forest.

The group was founded with 10 artists from across Wiltshire, Dorset, Hampshire and Somerset. The pandemic arrived only a few months in, and the group adapted by meeting online, either from home or connected together during solo walks, or by walking in pairs.

In 2021, a few months after I left my role at ‘a space’ to work freelance, I was very happy to be invited to join PaC. Finding friendship, solidarity and sunshine after the era of lockdowns was a blessing and a balm, which nurtured my practice as I embarked on a new chapter.

In 2022 PaP evolved into to PaC (practicing acts of commons / placing artists in common / practicing artists commoning / utm), a next phase which draws more deeply on Laura’s research into commoning practices in the New Forest, and celebrates the spirit of what happens between us.

What we do is meet somewhere in the New Forest and spend half a day together. This usually involves:


• the excitement of the plan: a location …
• the camaraderie of sharing journeys and co-ordinating station pick-ups for those of us who arrive by train

• shortly after arrival, a period of sharing news and personal updates, often involving solidarity and mutual support re unsuccessful applications, challenges of insecure teaching work, and managing daily life alongside practice.
• sharing knowledge valuable to each other: upcoming exhibitions, commissions, open calls, contacts.
• walking; immersing ourselves in open space, light and weather, away from home, studio and institutions
• navigating terrain: slipping, leaping, playing, laughing ⁃ sharing food and drink, sitting together on a blanket
• and there, reading, sharing research or writing, sometimes reading a text, taking it in turns to break it down and process it collectively, discussing
• sometimes, drawing, responding to place

The locations we choose are informed by research, curiosity, variety, weather. We have paddled in chalybeate streams, found routes around wet bogs and paths to special trees, walked mud into museums, giggled and hugged in car parks.

Occasionally children and dogs join us, sometimes we camp, and there are moments (such as the Rural Facets events, part of the How Can I Stay? programme commissioned by VASW) where we invite others to join us.

The PaC model has served and continues to serve us well. Our experiences together, and in the Forest, have created new directions for individual practices, borne collaborative exhibitions and conferences and, most important of all, given us much solidarity and laughter.

Time to share our food amongst us, metal cups full of hot tea. We sit in a huddle on a blanket, circling the square. Iterated over months, seasons, now years. Returning. Different conversations. Different places. Different selves return.
- excerpt from Gemma Gore My throat is full of forgetting

Acknowledgments:

Alys Scott-Hawkins is a Southampton-based artist who works with drawing and moving image in experimental processes, responding to place and making sense of lived experience. Alys is a member of a-n’s Artist Council, and works with other creative people as a mentor / coach, and access support worker for funding applications. More about this work at artistsupport.org.uk