Beneath The Trees Festival
Coventry

A Green Futures Festival In The City

Beneath The Trees took place at Naul's Mill Park in Coventry on 28 August 2021. Co-produced by Coventry Arts Collective and Coventry City of Culture Trust, it brought music, performance, food, workshops, storytelling and environmental activity into one of the city's green spaces as part of the wider Green Futures programme. I was invited to take part as a community textile artist, creating an activity that people could join without needing previous textile experience. The same Green Futures programme later included Walking Forest, which became another important strand of my environmental and collaborative practice.

Building A Phoenix From What Was Already There

The starting point was not a trip to buy new materials. My next-door neighbours had given me a very large pair of curtains, and the mottled cream lining became the base of the work. I added vintage pale fabrics from my own collected materials and denim offcuts that had been given to me from a jeans factory. Coventry's phoenix felt like the right image for the piece: a symbol of rebuilding, while Naul's Mill Park itself was going through a period of renewal and being encouraged as a place for people to spend time outdoors.

Designing Participation Into The Work

I wanted the textile piece to be collaborative in both its making and its finished use. The plan became a pair of outstretched phoenix wings, hung vertically between two trees so that people could stand in front of them once the feathers were added. Early trials taught me that asking visitors to make a complete feather from scratch would take too long and require too much skill for a busy public event. Instead, I prepared feather shapes in advance, adding wire centres so they could be handled and stitched more easily on the day.

Making With The Public

At the festival I managed two points of participation: a feather-making area and the large hanging textile where those contributions were added. Mural artist Katie O was working alongside me and sketched the outline of the phoenix wings onto the cloth, giving us a clear structure to build into. Children, families and other visitors could then contribute at their own level, while the finished form gradually became something people could physically step into and photograph themselves against.

Reuse Became Part Of My Method

This project sits at an important point in the development of my material practice. Community arts budgets were often small, and sometimes the most useful answer was to work with what was already available rather than treating limited resources as a barrier. The curtain, factory denim and donated fabrics were not second-best substitutes. They shaped the work itself. That resourcefulness later became a much more deliberate part of the environmental responsibility I describe in my Manifesto.

What The Project Taught Me

The preparation took far longer than the paid hours allowed, and the banner was not completed during the festival itself. That was useful learning. It made me think more carefully about how much invisible planning sits behind a public making activity, how far a process needs to be rehearsed before people arrive, and how much can realistically be achieved in one day. The unfinished banner also became an asset rather than a failure: it could be returned to and used again as a ready-made community engagement activity. Beneath The Trees helped me understand more clearly that good participation is designed in advance, but it still needs enough openness for the public to change what happens.

Part Of A Wider Community-Led Programme

The festival itself was led by Coventry Arts Collective and shaped by Coventry's creative communities. My contribution was one small part of a much larger day, and I want the project page to keep that distinction clear. The Coventry City of Culture Green Futures archive records Beneath The Trees as an urban village fete at Naul's Mill Park and places it within the city's wider environmental programme. For me, its importance lies in what I learnt through making alongside people: how reuse, preparation, invitation and play could come together in a public textile project.