Walt Shaw - Gong Man

Walt Shaw - Gong Man

Walt Shaw, Gong Man, during our Loughborough University Fruit Routes Gong Workshop preparing to honour the new trees planted in the Barefoot Orchard on February 11th 2015 with a Gong Ceremony and performance.

Walt gave two inspirational workshops and it's only now after the event that I find we have a mutual connection in that we both had the privilege of working in the past with the late great Lol Coxhill.

Here's Walt with Mahood and Lol performing at the Lamp Tavern in Birmingham in 2006:

https://vimeo.com/94787452

I've got a feeling that fate has brought Walt and I together through Fruit Routes and that we will soon work together on future projects.

Paul Conneally
Loughborough University
February 2015

Know Your Onions - The Kitchen Orchard

Know Your Onions
Paul Conneally
Rushey Mead School
2014

The guys from G4S arrive back at work at Rushey Mead Secondary School in Leicester to find all their onion tops eaten. They are perplexed. Is it mice? Rabbits? Maybe the pigeons? It's a mystery. Not downhearted they resolve to hoe the ground and try again. Maybe netting the crop would help? A pigeon pie might just do it!

The land is on the developing Rushey Mead Kitchen Orchard site which at the moment is just a twinkling in the eyes of cultural forager Paul Conneally and the management of the school. An orchard in the footprint of the old kitchen and dining rooms. An orchard of heritage apple varieties associated with Leicestershire. This forms part of the wider vision for the school grounds as an edible landscape.

Watch this space!