Walking Forest

A Ten Year Artwork

Walking Forest is a ten year participatory environmental artwork running from 2018 to 2028. It is led by Shelley Castle, Anne-Marie Culhane, Lucy Neal and Ruth Ben-Tovim, and connects women, trees, suffrage history and climate action through walking, making, growing and collective activity. I joined through the Coventry strand in 2021, so I am careful to distinguish between the wider artwork and my own place within it. I did not originate Walking Forest. I became one of the Coventry Anchor Women and brought my textile experience, making skills and willingness to work collectively into an existing project.

Becoming A Coventry Anchor Woman

My involvement began with several days at Rough Close woodland near Coventry, close to Floyds Fields and the HS2 route. We walked, listened and talked with environmental campaigners, historians and one another, exploring ecological grief, responsibility and the ways a forest might move through a city. That shared time became the foundation for the later public action. The Coventry Walking Forest archive records me among the Coventry Anchor Women, which matters because it reflects the role I actually held rather than making the project sound like something I led myself.

Making, Walking & Carrying The Birch

In October 2021 the Coventry strand moved into a two day city action, carrying a felled birch through Coventry from dawn towards evening and gathering again for a night vigil in the Cathedral ruins. I contributed to planning and costume making as well as taking part in the action itself. The clothing drew on practical dress associated with women organising politically, including ideas around the Rational Dress Society, while the making relied wherever possible on natural, recycled, found, borrowed and repurposed materials. That way of working sits closely with the resourceful material practice I have continued to develop and describe in my Manifesto.

The Relationship Continues

The Coventry action was not the end of my relationship with Walking Forest. In June 2025 I joined the Walking Forest Creative Camp at The Outwoods in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire, reconnecting with the project through walking, conversation and time in woodland. I later met Walking Forest women again in Coventry at Martina Irwin's Tree Sanctuary at Shilton Lane Allotments. Martina was also one of the Coventry Anchor Women, and returning to a place shaped by care for rescued trees made the continuing relationships around the project feel very tangible.

Growing The Suffragette Monterey Pine

One of the most literal ways Walking Forest continues in my life is through seed. I was given seed from the surviving Suffragette Monterey pine connected to the project, and I am still growing it now. That living material makes it difficult to think of Walking Forest as something completed in 2021. Growing from seed is slow, uncertain and dependent on care, and that feels entirely appropriate for an artwork concerned with what women inherit, protect and pass forward.

Towards 2028

Walking Forest continues towards 2028, marking the centenary of equal voting rights for women in Britain. The wider project is developing towards an intentional woodland and a continuing walking journey that will carry the suffrage and tree story forward. I do not know yet exactly what my next involvement will look like, and I want this page to remain open to that. For me, Walking Forest now belongs in the archive as an ongoing relationship: the Coventry experience is where I entered it, but the women, the gatherings, the seed and the questions continue.