Fruit Routes Graphic - Anne-Marie Culhane

Fruit Routes - graphic from the Fruit Routes Recipes pamphlet by Anne-Marie Culhane

FRUIT ROUTES

I've been working on Fruit Routes since 2011 with artist and environmental activist and my long time collaborator Anne-Marie Culhane who conceived Fruit Routes and drives it forward.

So many other artists have joined us on Fruit Routes and contributed time and works, ideas and interventions and the Fruit Route now has a life of its own beginning to spider out from the Loughborough University Campus into and across Loughbohemia.

Paul Conneally
(Little Onion)

Balancing An Apple On Your Head Race - Loughborough University

Participants in the 'Balancing An Apple On Your Head Run' at the artist led Fruit Routes Apple Olympics at Loughborough University.

Fruit Routes was conceived by artist and environmental activist Anne-Marie Culhane.

Photograph: Paul Conneally - Loughborough - October 2017

The Loughborough University Fruit Routes Apple Olympics 2016

Participants in the artist led Fruit Route Apple Olympics at Loughborough University wear not numbers but the names of fruit tree varieties that are planted on the Loughborough Fruit Route and associated orchards across the university campus.

Events in the Apple Olympics included the '1km or so' run, apple not shot putting, balancing an apple on your head race and the egg and apple race.

Fruit Routes is an ongoing work conceived and led by artist and environmental activist Anne-Marie Culhane.

Photograph: Paul Conneally 2016

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Competitors In The Fruit Routes Balancing An Apple On Your Head Race2016

Competitors in the artist led Fruit Routes Apple Olympics balancing an apple on your head race. Each competitor wears not a number but the name of a fruit tree species planted during the Fruit Routes work on Loughbohemia (some call it Loughborough) University Campus.

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Other events were the '1km Or So Fruit Routes Run' where the aim was for all competitors to cross the finishing line together and not shot but 'apple putting' not forgetting of course the children's 'Apple And Spoon Race'.

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Fruit Routes is conceived and planned by my long time collaborator artist activist Anne-Marie Culhane with and for the wonderful Loughborough University Sustainability Team and it's a pleasure to work on and have be associated with it as artist and poet year on year since its start.

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Paul Conneally
Loughbohemia
October 2016
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Anne-Marie Culhane and Rama Gupta at Loughborough University Fruit Routes

Artist and environmental activist, Anne-Marie Culhane, pictured with environmentalist and Green Party pioneer, Rama Gupta, during the artist led walk around Loughborough University 'Fruit Route'

Fruit Routes is an ongoing artwork conceived by Culhane that involves planting fruit trees and bushes around the university campus along with other artistic and environmental interventions.

The project urges users of the University to 'EAT YOUR CAMPUS'

Photograph: Paul Conneally

October 2015

Paul Conneally

SKEP hive mind - Loughborough University Fruit Routes 2015

Artist Paul Conneally during SKEP Loughborough University June 2015

SKEP

hive mind

Performative, Participative, Collaborative Installation

Anne-Marie Culhane and Paul Conneally

Fruit Routes Loughborough University

18th June 2015

We share our lives with and our very existence depends on the bees - a keystone species in the natural world.

Building on the tradition of Telling the Bees, where beekeepers informed the bees of significant events in their communities or lives, you are invited to share something of your personal thoughts on community, cooperation and the future of our relationship with the ecological community (animals, insects, plants).

Speak out loud

Share your thoughts in silence

Write in the book

Artist Anne-Marie Culhane during SKEP Loughborough University June 2015

SKEP is part of the ongoing Fruit Routes / Eat Your Campus work at Loughborough University in June 2015. SKEP was one element in a day of events and interventions coordinated by Culhane that included a wild tea party, visits to the campus apiary and an evening of moth catching and watching. SKEP offered a space for thought and quiet in the presence of a listener, SKEP, Culhane or Conneally sat passively, silent, wearing a traditional British woven basket beehive, a skep, on their head.

SKEP Hive Mind - Anne-Marie Culhane and Paul Conneally

SKEP
hive mind

Performative, Participative, Collaborative Installation
Anne-Marie Culhane and Paul Conneally
Fruit Routes Loughborough University
Took place on: 18th June 2015

We share our lives with and our very existence depends on the bees - a keystone species in the natural world.

Building on the tradition of Telling the Bees, where beekeepers informed the bees of significant events in their communities or lives, people were invited to share something of their personal thoughts on community, cooperation and the future of our relationship with the ecological community (animals, insects, plants).

"Speak out loud

Share your thoughts in silence

Write in the book"

Culhane & Conneally 2015

Anne-Marie Culhane on Art as Collaboration

Click the above to listen to Anne-Marie Culhane in convervasion with Rob Hopkins talk about art as collaboration and her wider work.


Anne-Marie Culhane during Fruit Routes at Loughborough University Photo: Paul Conneally

Bees + Moths + Trees + People

Open and Shut
Artists Anne-Marie Culhane and Paul Conneally
Photograph: Christopher Mear

Now gearing up for Fruit Routes Summer 2015 'Bees + Moths + Trees + People' on Wednesday 17th June 2015 - it's free!

A Spade in the Barefoot Orchard

A Spade in the Barefoot Orchard

A spade used during the February planting of an additional 32 trees in the Fruit Routes Barefoot Orchard at Loughborough University. The planting was followed by a gong ceremony and performance, new type of wassail, to celebrate and bless the trees, the ground.

The planting and gong ceremony form part of artist and environmental activist Anne-Marie Culhane's ongoing work Fruit Routes supported by Loughborough University Sustainability Team through Jo Hasbury-Shields

Paul Conneally
Loughborough University Barefoot Orchard
February 2015

Apple Peel Poetry

Apple Peel Poetry Installation - Paul Conneally 2014

During artist activist Anne-Marie Culhane's Fruit Routes Harvest Celebration at Loughborough University, Conneally invites visitors to peel an apple, trying to create as long a single piece of peel as they can They then measure the peel in centimetres and find the page number equivalent to the length of peel in a book of collected Wordsworth poems. They count down the number of lines equal to the number of letters in their name, copy it out on a label replacing one word with the word apple and hang the peel and poem up across the gable end of a garden shed.

Loughborough University Fruit Route October 2014

Barefoot Blindfold - Choreographed by Birdsong

The blind man's guide,
Meek and neglected thing, of no renown!
Soon will peep forth the primrose, ere it fades
Friends shall I have at dawn, blackbird and thrush
To rouse me, and a hundred warblers more!

from 'The Recluse' by William Wordsworth

Artist Paul Conneally during his and Anne-Marie Culhane's Barefoot Blindfold piece at 5am on Loughborough University Fruit Route.

Eleven were slow walked by Anne-Marie Culhane into an orchard section of her ongoing Fruit Route work at Loughborough University to take part in Culhane and Conneally's 'Barefoot Blindfold.

Participants chose a fruit tree sat against it and were blindfolded in order to foucus their senses away from the visual for the the first half hour and then still in slience to spend the next half hour without the bliindfold recording their emotions / reactions to the fruit route at dawn.

Conneally invited them during the blindfold session to allow the sounds to choreograph the movements of their upper body and arms. This is a short section filmed by Miriam Keye of Conneally being choreographed by nature in fact by birdsong.

This is only a small part of the whole of Barefoot Blinfold but offers perhaps opportunities to explore the idea of being choreographed by nature further in other works to come. Perhaps we already are.

Chris Mear - Photographer

Chris Mear - Photographer

Paul Conneally

Loughborough 2014

Adrian Russell - Moth Recorder

Adrian Russell - Moth Recorder

Paul Conneally

Loughborough 2014

Adrian Russell is the County Moth Recorder for Leicestershire and Rutland. He is seen here during the Fruit Routes 'Night of Moths' at Loughborough University.

Fruit Routes is an ongoing work conceived by artist and environmental visionary, Anne-Marie Culhane, for and with Loughborough University Sustainability Team which now forms part of the wider EAT YOUR CAMPUS (a Fruit Routes slogan) initiative at the University.

EAT YOUR CAMPUS won the prestigious Guardian Higher Education Award for Sustainability 2014.

Anne-Marie Culhane - Environmental Artist

Anne-Marie Culhane - Environmental Artist

Paul Conneally

Loughborough 2014

"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 (urban or rural). I am motivated to work with others to reduce the harm we are inflicting on our planet; to increase understanding our place in the family of things and to bring to life positive visions now and for the future."

Anne-Marie Culhane

Find out more about Anne-Marie and her work here: Anne-Marie Culhane

EAT YOUR CAMPUS - Fruit Routes - The Second Planting

Two years on after the first trees were planted on the Fruit Route, an artist led project by Anne-Marie Culhane, across Loughborough University Campus, we planted more trees. 

The planting followed a workshop on pruning, cutting back to keep the previously planted trees  healthy and promote growth.

I wrote between digging and will publish what comes in due course, in the meantime here's the poem I wrote during the first wave of planting:

The Cut in Her Stomach

bare trees
the sound of spades 
across tarmac

we huddle
by a green tractor 
how to plant a tree

cold rain
it’s at least a two man job
a tree like this

the English undergrad
asks everyone
‘what's nepotism?’

a twinge
from the cut in her stomach 
she digs deep

no not cold
just wet
and getting heavier

the lost referee
asks for directions 
to the all weather pitch

hazel whips 
we find a seam 
of hard core

‘with the hedge’ 
he says 'plant three for one
just in case’

she’ll need
a stepladder now
to see the runners' legs

Paul Conneally
written on 18 Febr, 2012 the first day of planting the new Fruit Route at Loughborough University

'Solidarity' - Fruit Routes Loughborough University - The Second Planting

Student volunteers prepare to dig holes and plant more fruit trees on the Fruit Route at Loughborough University, UK.

Fruit Routes is an ongoing project conceived by artist and environmental activist Anne-Marie Culhane.

Photograph: 'Spades' Paul Conneally, Loughborough, 2014

Topping Out 'Kiss the Gable' - Paul Conneally & Anne-Marie Culhane

TOPPING OUT – KISS THE GABLE – Paul Conneally and Anne-Marie Culhane 2013 Photo: Kev Ryan

Cultural Forager, artist and poet, Paul Conneally, anoints a garden Shed during Conneally and Culhane’s ‘Topping Out Kiss the Gable’ ritual performance piece at Loughborough University Fruit Routes Harvest Celebration.

The shed stands on the LANDSCAPING AND GARDENING SOCIETY plot at Loughborough University and was recently erected to replace the original shed which was burnt down earlier in the year.

‘TOPPING OUT Kiss the Gable’ is based on the ceremony of Topping Out that builders undertake when the highest point of a building is completed. In Conneally and Culhane’s version, switches of tree and other plants are bound together and placed at the apex of the shed. The hanging plant material includes rowan, holly and bay twigs to ward of bad spirits and bring good luck to the shed and all who use it.

Two ladders were placed against the gable and people at the Fruit Routes Harvest Celebration were invited to climb one ladder, kiss the apex of the gable and say a few words if they felt that they wanted to while at the same time being anointed by Conneally, who is up the other ladder, with Apple juice freshly pressed on site that afternoon.

After Topping Out and Kissing the Gable the gathered people moved to a bonfire where food, drink and conversation carried on into the night with music being provided by the band Solana.

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.

Anne-Marie Culhane in the Landscaping & Gardening Our Society Shed

Artist Anne-Marie Culhane in the LAGOS shed Loughborough during the Fruit Routes Harvest Celebration. We had a rocking, fruit pressing, hell of a good time!Paul Connealy Oct 2012