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As the project moves into its next phase, the work is shifting from research and community engagement in the New Forest towards an exhibition in Venice, where these conversations will be shared within a new cultural context. My practice has continued to develop in direct response to the workshops with young people, using their reflections on place, belonging, and memory as a starting point for a new body of work.
I have been exploring the idea of place through cyanotype, using the process to transfer and capture the physical presence of the forest. By collecting natural matter from different locations and exposing it through cyanotype, I am creating works that hold both a physical trace of the landscape and an emotional connection to it. The process sits between documentation and memory, allowing each site to leave its own imprint while acknowledging that our relationship with place is never fixed, but continually shaped through experience.
The conversations shared throughout the workshops have encouraged me to think beyond the forest as a mapped landscape and instead as a collection of personal moments. The young people described places through memories, routines, emotions, and encounters, revealing a landscape understood through lived experience rather than geography alone. Their reflections have prompted me to consider the forest as a network of remembered places and transitional spaces, where paths become markers of individual journeys and seemingly ordinary locations carry deep personal significance.
As this work travels to Venice, it creates a dialogue between two landscapes that are geographically distant yet connected through shared questions of identity, stewardship, tourism, and belonging. The cyanotypes become more than representations of the New Forest; they carry fragments of the landscape itself, inviting audiences to consider how place is constructed through memory, material, and collective experience. In this way, the exhibition continues the conversations that began in the workshops, extending them into a wider international context while remaining rooted in the voices and experiences of the young people who helped shape the work.
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