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

SUGAR ROPE

'Sugar Rope'

Culhane & Conneally

Loughborough 2014

One of 20 hand platted sugar ropes hung in and around the Barefoot Orchard on Loughborough University's Fruit Route.

The ropes are made from a bed sheet ripped into lengths and hand platted by artist Anne-Marie Culhane with visitors to the Fruit Routes Wild Tea Party in the Barefoot Orchard.

The ropes are then soaked in a hot syrup, a form of 'lepidopterist's sugar' made on site by Paul Conneally, mixing and heating two cans of Mackeson, 1kg of soft brown sugar and black treacle.

In the evening the ropes are hung around the orchard area to attract moths. At the same time light traps are set up to also draw in moths for the gathered people to watch.

Fruit Routes is an ongoing project conceived by Anne-Marie Culhane for Loughborough University Sustainability Team. It now forms part of the wider university EAT YOUR CAMPUS (a Fruit Routes slogan) initiative that won the 2014 Guardian Higher Education Award for Sustainability.

Ancient Oak - Bradgate Park, Leicestershire

'Ancient Oak' - Paul Conneally 2014

This oak tree is around five hundred years old.

It stands in Bradgate Park, Leicestershire, the family home of Lady Jane Grey, Queen of England for just nine days before being usurped by Queen Mary who later had her beheaded.

Human Bat Walk - Fruit Route - Loughborough University

As the public gathered for artist activist Anne-Marie Culhane’s ecological bat walk artist Paul Conneally initiated a Human Bat Walk utilising splacist artist and ofttime collaborator Nikki Pugh’s bat goggles. People were invited to wear the sonar bat goggles and experience the orchard space as human bats using only echo location. After this they set out to walk the campus in darkness and meet Loughborough University’s real bat population.