Alex Murdin

“Landscape isn’t just a physical thing; it’s there within us.” We are thrilled to welcome the incredible @bro_mate to the Festival. They will be appearing @ashburtonarts today, Saturday 2nd May at 11am, in an event called Art, Place and the Ancients: remaking the past. Robin will be chatting with @lithicality about their fascinating work which bridges sculpture and performance and is deeply rooted in the prehistory of the British Isles. - Also today @ashburtonarts we have at 0930 @rebeccambeattie in “Bewitched by Dartmoor , 12:30 Archaeologist Dr Lee Bray with Traces of Our Ancestors, and 14:00 @stone_lands @mssophiepierce @kirsteen.mcnish with Love Loss and Landscape Then, if that were not enough, there will be a Mummers Play at @field.system at 1530 followed by the fantasic @grimspoundmorris and @newton_bushel_morris dancing outside @ashburtonarts Full deets on website - link in bio - Come join us it’s going to be a fabulous day !

Happy Beltane ! If you are celebrating the maddest merriest month of May then why not join us @dartmoortorsfest where @field.system has put on an amazing set of May Day Revels alongside a programme talks, walks and workshops that cover everything from natural magic, making megaliths and rewilding your life. The May Day revels start tonight (Fri) @ashburtonarts with a film featurette by the neo neolithic @the.stone.club and the haunting folk music of @storytimewithcraven , tomorrow (Sat) join our old friends @grimspoundmorris and festival newbies @newton_bushel_morris (with a dash of Valiant Mumming thrown in !?) outside Field System and on Sunday we’ll be looking forward clearly to summer with one of the patron saints of eyes at our blessing of St Gudula’s Well. Check out what on at dartmoortorsfestival.co.uk #beltane #mayday #morris #sumerisacumenin Photos by top Dartmoor photographer @glavindstrachan and courtesy Stone Club, Craven and Grimspound Border Morris

So much art feeds off the land and you can get a good idea of it's breadth and diversity from the exhibitions on over this weekend @dartmoortorsfest 26 @mjessett is showing new work about his love of the Dart River in the studio at festival partners @field.system gallery when you can also see an exhibition of mazes and labyrinths by the inimitable @lallymacbeth @matthew___shaw and @penny_macbeth , not to mention new drawings by visionary and mythologiser @drmartinshaw . At Ashburton Arts Centre see tors and megaliths in Stone Ages with @lithicality & Andy Stacey, featuring intriguing work students from #southdartmoorcommunitycollege. Around the rest of Ashburton you need to see the amazing collages of Dartmoor @thisismadebyjam , the very latest landscape photography and paintings of the eagle eyed Mark Burley @sherewoodgallery and a brilliant group of artists and makers, from printers to potters, @ashburton.artisans.collective Further afield why not visit the beautiful space of @artsgreenhill in Mortonhampstead showing artists inspired by earth pigments or even better book onto an fascinating and informative wild ink workshop with the brilliant @princetownpress Enjoy the weekend. Full details on dartmoortorsfest.co.uk of exhibitions and workshops link in bio. #dartmoor #contemporaryart #makers #landscape

Turning to the land and stones when nothing makes sense. Come to @dartmoortorsfest to the hear the poignant and beautiful experiences of two talented writers coming to terms with our human condition, our life and death, through the power of the places they love. Fiona Robertson's @stone_lands acclaimed book Stone Lands follows her journey across the UK in search of the megaliths and monuments that have always allowed us to transcend our seemingly brief cellular existence. Sophie Pierce's @mssophiepierce powerful book the Green Hill describes how immersion in nature gives back to us with so many sparkling facets. Both books are about grief but also about how land can heal if we take the time to listen and learn from it. So join both authors, as their beautifully illustrated new paperbacks are just launched, to share their conversation with the genius loci, the spirits of place, in Love, Loss & Landscape at the Dartmoor Tors Festival 2nd May @ashburtonarts Images by @phillipharris @lithicality @hollydrawsinink #landscape #megaliths #healing

Dartmoor speaks to all, young and old. Artists of all ages in Ashburton will be sharing their perspectives of the granite and moor over the @dartmoortorsfest weekend. These images show new lithicality work including hagstones and neolithic propped stones; the dream like moorland landscapes of Andrew Stacey; and works by southdartmoorcc Create Arts students led by @katieupton1994 - a collaborative body of work exploring the presence of the tors in their lives. These are all in the exhibition, Stone Ages, on @ashburtonarts during festival events, now till 5th May, link in bio. #dartmoor #tors #landscape #art

A little taster of a magical film - a collaboration between @janelovell128 and @janetlees2.0 which will be shown as part of our poetry session at @dartmoortorsfest on Sunday 3rd May at 11am @ashburtonarts It will be a beautiful and thought-provoking conversation between Jane and @markhaworthbooth , which will include readings and a couple of poetry films. Do join us! It will be a moment of enchantment amidst the bustle of life. Info and booking at @dartmoortorsfest website - link in bio. @lithicality

Making megaliths from scratch is a wonderous thing. Even more so when these are bringing people together today just as they did in the past. Robin Sullivan, one of the most innovative artists working with place and pre-history anywhere, will be talking about his new additions to the megalithic landscape of Britain as a fantastic addition to the @dartmoortorsfest line up. Robin has kindly stepped in at the last minute to replace Peter Randall Page, who sadly will be unable to join us due to ill health (get better soon Peter x). Like all of us Robin has been very much inspired by Peter's art and the landscapes of moor and stone that they both live and work in. @bro_mate works with clay and other materials to make deeply personal and engaging social artworks that bridge sculpture and performance including spectacular open air ceramic firings. Recent works include a major new public art commission for Newquay making 3 new megaliths in bronze from over 400 casts of places around the town that people there feel are special. The hope is that these will become new meeting places and sites of community. Proudly queer and very open about his bi-polar disorder Robin brings new perspectives to ancient ideas. So please support Robin by coming to his talk - Art, Place and the Ancients: Remaking the past - on Saturday 2nd May 11:00 at Ashburton Arts Centre @ashburtonarts More information through the Dartmoor Tors Festival website – link in bio. #megaliths #ancientstones #westcountry #contemporaryart #festival

Have you ever been beaten against the bounds? it’s a Dartmoor folk tradition for people to beat the bounds by being bounced on the stones that mark the limits of the parish. This was so that new people literally had the memory drummed into them ! Come and see aspects of life amongst the granite with two of the most knowledgeable people on the moor, photographer Chris Chapman and archaeologist Alan Endacott in conversation @dartmoortorsfest to kick off the Festival talks on Friday 1st of May 15:30 @ashburtonartscentre Chris is an award winning photographer with a new book out Hallowed Earth: A Lifetime in Photography. Alan is the founder of the Museum of Dartmoor Life and has rediscovered three new stone circles on Dartmoor in the past 10 years. Both have been studying Dartmoor, from the ancient settlements to the contemporary farmers, since the 70’s so we are in for a treat. Photo from the 70's @chrischapmanphotography compared with photo from @dartmoortrustarchive from the mid 20C #megaliths #uplandfarming #dartmoor #folktraditions

The stones of Dartmoor call to us in the voices of our ancestors and perhaps to none stronger than shamans Peter Knight and Sue Wallace-Knight, stone whisperers extra-ordinary, who are appearing @dartmoortorsfest this year with a walk at the legendary site of #merrivale. We were lucky enough to be guided by them around a Dartmoor ceremonial site and learnt about sensing the megaliths, understanding more about their connection to the landscape around – just as powerful now as when they were coaxed into position 4000 years ago. Peter Knight is the author of Dartmoor Mindscapes – Re-visioning A Sacred Landscape which connects the spirit world to the latest in archeological thinking about Dartmoor, having been a guide to megalithic landscapes and earth mysteries across the UK for many years. Sue Wallace Knight is equally experienced with these sites and plays (and makes) amazing shamanic and djembe drums. Join to them learn about alignments, hear deep drumming and experiment with dowsing at Merrivale on Sunday 3rd May, 13:00 – get tickets on dartmoortorsfestival.co.uk #dartmoor #megaliths #shaman #earthmysteries

From stomping heavily to ancient stones, to traversing the trickiest of labyrinths @the.stone.club has been at the forefront of a stone-cold folk movement for some time so it will be great to see them this year standing tall @dartmoortorsfest Not only are @lallymacbeth @penny_macbeth and @matthew___shaw showing their latest artwork @field.system exploring portals, labyrinths and mazes and the strange creatures that inhabit them (us mostly) but there is also a chance to see them in action with a featurette film accompanied by the sound of the stones courtesy Matthew Shaw, plus you get to hear the Frankensteins of English folk music Craven @storytimewithcraven . What’s not to like ? See the exhibition in the Field System gallery (free) and join the Field System May Day Revels in the evening @ashburtonarts – tix available still on dartmoortorsfestival.co.uk #dartmoor #megaliths #WhyDontYouJustSwitchOffYourTelevisionSetandGoandDoSomethingLessBoringInstead

For around 2 centuries an extroardinary group of inscribed stones lay covered by undergrowth and could have been lost forever, had it not been for the efforts of Simon Dell, a moorland guide and historian. The stones were the work of an earnest young parson called Edward Bray back in the early 19th century, , who decided to carve the names of classical and ancient poets on boulders around the River Cowsic. But he didn’t stop there, he also carved bardic runes on some rocks on an island in the river. (There was a lot of interest in Celtic mythology at the time). Over the years the stones had become obscured and forgotten, untl Simon embarked on a project to find them and restore them all a few years ago. Most of the stones are on private land so cannot be seen, but Simon is leading a walk to them during the festival, a rare opportunity to see these stones in the company of the man who knows them best. It’s happening on Saturday 2nd May at 2pm at Two Bridges. Find out more and book tickets on the @dartmoortorsfest website. (Link in bio) images: 1. Searching for the stones 2. Working party clearing the stones 3. Simon in the Tavistock Subscriotion Library where he first read about the stones and vowed to find them 4. Bardic runes in a stone in the Cowsic (just visible) 5. The ‘Spencer’ stone @lithicality

Dartmoor is a land of rugged rock and oak-sided valleys alive with folk tales. Come listen to these tales with word weaver @sarahurleystoryteller during @dartmoortorsfest Meet witch-hares and whisht-hounds, pixies, giants and Ashburton’s very own river sprite Cutty Dyer with Sarah @ashburtonarts on the 3rd May. This event will transport you into a world of stone and river transformed into something wonderful and strange. Artwork courtesy Sarah Hurley #dartmoor #storytelling #folktales