Letters to the Earth Between Despair and Hope

Written by Nadine Malcolm, Development Officer for Arts, Culture & Heritage

"We need real community and co-operation. We need to re-establish true communication—true communion—with ourselves, with the Earth, and with one another.”  

Thich Nhat Hanh

Hub Members Lairg & District Learning Centre recently hosted a multi-modal exhibition, Letters to the Earth Between Despair and Hope, over three days in Rogart Mart.  The exhibition is a response to the wider Letters to the Earth project initiated by Ontario based artist and University of the Highlands and Islands student Carmel Brennan.

Peace Activist poet and teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh advocates a human-based solution to solving the climate crisis, and Letters to the Earth feels like a beautiful exploration of how our relationships with each other underpin our relationship to the planet, and how we care for it. 

There is something very personal and raw about crafting a hand-written letter, a sort of assemblage of thoughts, brought from the tangles of our souls. Letters to the Earth evokes  the feeling of an intimate relationship between writer and viewer, very much like a conversation with a dear friend. Being able to trace the hand of the author provides us, as the viewer, a delicious extra layer of insight into the person behind the marks. So too, is this conveyed through heart-warming (and at times heart-breaking) work by the children from the local school. Although in name it is Letters, these expressions and musings take multiple forms, including visual art, sound pieces, hand-bound books and creative writing.

Various workshops ran alongside the exhibition, from foraging to poetry. Writer and ethnologist Cait O’ Neill McCullagh expertly guided us through a wonderful wordsmithing session, The earth Writes Back, inviting us to collectively imagine what our planet might say if we listened closely enough.

The exhibition was not static but grew and evolved as visitors and workshop participants pegged their own contributions to the - very apt - baler twine washing lines, cocreating the continuation and evolution of these ideas throughout the weekend, and beyond.

At the Durness Games on Friday 28th July, in collaboration with the NW2045 Regional Land Use Partnership, we’ll continue to explore these themes and invite our communities to add their thoughts to this melting pot of possibility.