About
Hello and welcome!
I hope you enjoy exploring the website.
The projects pages gives detail on specific projects, displayed roughly in date order starting with the most recent. The news page shares snippets of things as they happen so you can see what I’ve been up to recently. If you want to find out a bit more about my motivation and background read on, have a look at my CV and get in touch by email at amculhane dot co dot uk.
From 1994, I have been initiating, catalysing, designing creative and eco-arts projects, events and performances and working as an artist, activist and educator. This includes residencies, commissions, eco-activism, education and artist-led projects work across and between disciplines. My work takes place mostly in outdoor spaces: orchards, community centres, parks, farms, the street, by or on rivers and sometimes in galleries and museums and is framed within the context of a global climate and ecological emergency.
I draw inspiration from the cycles of nature and seasons; permaculture (learning from natural systems); environmental and ecological concerns or questions and listening and responding to people, landscapes and particular sites. I aim to work with others to reduce the harm we are inflicting on our planet; to increase understanding of our place in the family of things and to bring alive positive and life-sustaining visions at a time of deepening environmental and social justice crises.
I am committed to sustainability and legacy for projects, collaboration, systems (joined-up) thinking, co-operation and action and have set up a number of longer-term and open-source projects in the UK. Along the way I studied for an MA in Interdisciplinary Arts at University of Leeds, focused on environmental practice and improvisation and studied for a diploma in Permaculture Design. I am now a visiting research fellow at the Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter, a member of the International Eco-Art network and part of Culture Declares Emergency.
I work across different artistic disciplines including visual arts, installation, dance/movement, performance, film, writing, podcast and other media and have exhibited, performed, taught and undertaken residencies focusing on in UK but also in Europe and Asia. I collaborate with people from many walks of life including fishers, scientists, swimmers, cooks, growers, farmers, historians, geographers.
Awards include: Observer Ethical Award Grassroots category 2010 for Abundance Network; Guardian University Award 2014 Sustainability Project Eat Your Campus; Independent on Sunday Happy List 2012
In 2023 I’m returning to the core of my creative practice and focusing on teaching, mentoring, peer support and consultancy including the areas of:
- eco-arts practice and legacy
- arts, place, community at a time of climate and ecological emergency
- permaculture & the arts
- eco-activism & creative resistance
- community & academic research and arts & academic partnerships
Wayne Hill writer & associate editor Performance Research describes my practice:
Anne-Marie creates work that encourages people to sense again their own intuitions. She knows that forces shaping contemporary culture subvert or distort important human impulses towards generosity, gratitude and celebration. Her work draws those latent instincts into action, through projects that alongside their aesthetic power offer different ways of being in the world. This demands of her, in addition to being a visual artist and maker, that she must be a choreographer, creating scores and situations for sometimes large numbers of people to live in often over extended durations. Her work is necessarily communal – a word that describes her relationships with her audiences, associates, and human and non-human collaborators. Part of her gift as an artist lies in her ability to welcome others into the work. She brings people together into affirmative ways of living by setting in motion dynamic frames of ecology and connection.
Anne Langford on mentoring:
I had two days of mentoring with Anne-Marie as part of my Arts Council England, Developing Your Creative Practice project. It was such a nourishing experience that helped me develop my thinking and grow in confidence and purpose. The whole experience was really holistic and considered, with lots of talking, walking, a swim and even a sail and a picnic on a sandbank – quite literally providing a new perspective. I can tend to move at a high pace and with Anne-Marie’s guidance explored deeper and slower ways of making, something that has directly impacted projects I’m working on. I left feeling supported, inspired, grounded in my body and excited to take my next steps.
