Od Arts Festival in Somerset

🌿 Open Day at Dawe’s Twineworks! Join us Saturday 28th for a celebration of local craft, history, and hear about the amazing journey of flax. When: Saturday, 28th March Time: 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM 📸 We’re sharing some lovely memories of harvesting the Dawe’s Twineworks flax plot! These were taken back in July, as part of the Od Arts Festival, where the crop was planted as part of the Growing Futures project. 🌾Special Guest: To bring the story full circle, Vicky Putler (The Flax Project) will be joining us for a talk at 14:30. Vicky will be sharing her expertise and may even demonstrate the traditional processes of extracting fibres and spinning yarn. It’s a rare chance to see how the very plants we harvested are transformed into textile. We can’t wait to see you there! #somersetcool #thingstodoinsomerset @odartsfest

#Repost @osrprojects ・・・ 🙌 Thank you to all the wonderful creative people we have had the pleasure of collaborating with this year 🍾 Artists, curators, writers, visitors, volunteers and friends. We may have spent months hatching plans, weeks building exhibitions, or just sat next to each other at a talk, or shared a laugh and some food together… we love you all and wish you the best for 2026! 📷 mixed bag some @katydocking 😉

🎬 We are delighted to share the short film of Od Arts Festival 2025 - Thinking in Circles produced by Liberty Smith. The film includes a very fitting score by Philip Reeder which transported us right back to that calm weekend in May. ⬆️ To watch the full short film link in bio ⬆️ @studiojago.co.uk @philipmreeder We would like to extend our gratitude and thanks to Arts Council England and The National Lottery Heritage Fund and thank you National Lottery players for supporting this project. @aceagrams @heritagefunduk @osrprojects @dawes_twineworks @odartfest

A spine tingling performance from @tlkvox at Od Arts Festival 2025 ✨ #contemporaryart #artsfestival #odartsfestival #somerset #gigphotography #tlkvox #fujifilm #fujifilmxt5 #fujifilm_xseries #myfujilove

#Repost @cherrytruluck ・・・ It doesn’t escape my notice how unbelievably privileged I am - with the world in the state it is - to be able to work in a culture of abundance, where I can share food, collective moments of rest and practice generously and openly. I am hugely grateful to @odartsfest for this recent opportunity to do so as part of the ‘Thinking In Circles’ seminar day. The feast I offered up, gathered around a communal long table at @dawes_twineworks , was called ‘Breathy Encounters’. The menu embodied moments of delicious encounter between temporalities of growth and decay, embracing seasonality, ancestral time and speculative futures. It was a meal shaped by slowness, improvisation and the cyclical rhythm of the breath - not a fixed event but a gathering within a longer flow of time. In the midst of it all we took a moment to lay our heads down and rest deeply together on the grassy mounds I had grown for everyone to use as plates. We were also joined by Alex Montgomery from @generation.soil (amazing people - check them out!) with all his composting kit to ensure the cycle was complete. These wonderful photos were taken by the very talented @katydocking MENU inhale: plantain, lungwort, nettle, anise, oat straw, linden, red clover exhale saffron and fava bean, pickled oyster mushrooms, fermented oatcakes, thyme rest beetroot and malted oat, pickled beetroot, wild garlic oat dumpling inhale fig and hogweed sowans bread, violet honey butter, bee pollen apple blossom oat amazake exhale Thanks so much to @clarksusie and @simonleedicker for making this happen and to @andy_parker_studio @livesofthings @chantellehenocq @strawberrypunnett and the lovely folk at Dawes Twineworks for logistical and moral support! What a totally gorgeous day.

Lovely day harvesting the Dawes Twineworks Flax plot, planted as part of Growing Futures, Od Arts Festival 2025 @odartsfest @dawes_twineworks So great to have some of the children there who sowed the flax seeds back in late April. Also great to catch up with Simon and Ann of @flaxlanduk (photo of me wearing a flax/linseed souwester hat made by Simon - I want one) And Julie @pigsmoor and her wooden Viking sail project and giant socks! Thank you to everyone who came along to help with the harvest and chat all things flax and twine, sails and ropes. Very special thank you to Chris, Ross and Val and all the volunteers who have made Dawes Twineworks such an amazing place ❤️

~~ From breath to dust ~~ Jes Fernie   “To reach the underworld, I walk on grass, tarmac, roots, concrete and soil. It’s not a long journey, but it’s more than likely that I kill a number of insects, fungi, and other microcosms along the way. I sit in a field and place headphones on my ears…’’ Listen to ‘From breath to dust’ read by Jes Fernie. 👂Link in bio 🔗 Jes Fernie was writer in residence for the 2025 Od Arts Festival. Her text is a circular journey, starting in West Coker, travelling through the earth, out the other side and back again. It begins with Michelle Atherton’s ‘Soil Séance’, a deep listening to the underworld, and takes in a selection of artworks in the festival. @jesfernie @its_m.atherton Photography @katydocking ⁠ ⁠ Od Arts Festival – Thinking in Circles took place 23-25 May 2025 organised by OSR Projects and supported by Arts Council England @aceagrams and we thank National Lottery players @heritagefunduk

PaC⁠ Artists in Residence⁠ ⁠ Throughout Od Arts Festival PaC artists Gemma Gore, Laura Eldret and Melanie Rose were in residence and on Sunday festival goers were invited to join them for an artists-led walk through the ancient Holloways local to the Cokers. PaC - @leldret @gee.el.gee @melanieroseart ⁠ ⁠ Together we walk, explore and create a commons of exchange and peer support. PaC: placing artists in common / practicing artists commoning / utm (utm = yoU Tell Me, acknowledging that PaC can be and is different in experience and meaning to different participants).⁠ ⁠ Photography @katydocking ⁠ ⁠ Od Arts Festival – Thinking in Circles took place 23-25 May 2025 organised by OSR Projects and supported by Arts Council England @aceagrams and we thank National Lottery players @HeritageFundUK ⁠

EMII ALRAI⁠ Waypoints⁠ ⁠ Emii Alrai produced a new commission for Dawe's Twine Works in West Coker, the UK’s only surviving 19th century twine works, and historic producer of twine for the maritime industry. Mimicking geological forms, ancient ruins and artefacts, her works looked at the role of map tables in the lands that empires conquer and their relationship to the maritime industry.⁠ ⁠ Emii Alrai is an artist and trained museum registrar whose work spans material investigation in relation to memory, critique of the western museological structure and the complexity of ruins. Working primarily in sculpture and installation, her work operates as large-scale realms built in relation to bodies of research which concern archaeology and the natural environments objects are excavated from. Weaving in oral histories, inherited nostalgia and the details of language to question the rigidity of Empire and the power of hierarchy to interpolate the static presence of history. ⁠@emiialrai ⁠ ⁠ Past solo exhibitions include Lithics at Quench Gallery, Margate (2024); A Core of Scar, The Hepworth Wakefield & iniva (2022); and Reverse Defence at Workplace Foundation in Newcastle (2022). Alrai’s work is held in public collections including the British Museum, London; Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds; the Arts Council Collection, London; the Government Art Collection, and The Hepworth Wakefield.⁠ ⁠ VENUE⁠ 1. Dawe’s Twineworks, West Coker⁠ ⁠ Photography @katydocking ⁠ ⁠ Od Arts Festival – Thinking in Circles took place 23-25 May 2025 organised by OSR Projects and supported by Arts Council England @aceagrams and we thank National Lottery players @HeritageFundUK ⁠

GROUNDMOUTH⁠ Workshop and Installation⁠ ⁠ Groundmouth lead two workshops which explored the history of the flax industry: how hyper industrialisation has led to a sense of disembodiment and how the tacitly of flax can bring us back into relationship with ourselves and the land. They weaved new mythologies of industrialisation to intuitively understand its complex and haunting legacy, through a sprawling and scavenged installation of sculpture and sound. ⁠ ⁠ Harry Martin and Milly Melbourne are Groundmouth, a collaboration born from The Field artist residency in the old headquarters of the National Coal Board in Derbyshire.⁠ @groundmouth ⁠ ⁠ Harry Martin’s work describes alchemical transformations leading to a deepening sense of embodiment, interdependence and connection to the land, through shimmering pastel drawings, drag rituals and fragmented choral soundscapes.⁠ ⁠ Milly Melbourne is the founder of oB wear where pieces are slowly hand worked with care, incorporating labour-intensive historical garment making techniques and handpicking natural materials with a story to tell.⁠ ⁠ VENUE⁠ 1. Dawe’s Twineworks, West Coker⁠ ⁠ Photography @katydocking ⁠ ⁠ Od Arts Festival – Thinking in Circles took place 23-25 May 2025 organised by OSR Projects and supported by Arts Council England @aceagrams and we thank National Lottery players @HeritageFundUK ⁠

VICKY PUTLER (FLAX PROJECT CIC) & RACHEL DOBBS⁠ The West Coker Strop - 2025⁠ ⁠ Visitors and schools were invited to contribute to the making of the West Coker Strop while the artists ‘spin a yarn’, bringing to life the language and vocabulary of flax, linen and rope-making which still informs our everyday speech. The West Coker Strop will be a new community folk art object made from rope which is intertwined with people’s wishes, hopes, magic manifestations, and affirmations for the village and its community.⁠ ⁠ Vicky Putler is the Director of Flax Project CIC. Previously a textile designer/printer, frustration at not being able to source UK linen led her to want to grow her own flax. In 2021, under the name The Flax Project, she began growing flax in Cornwall and seeking ways to create the necessary green infrastructure. ⁠ ⁠ Flax Project CIC has run several grant funded community projects in Plymouth and is currently commissioned for the two year HLF funded ‘Blockhouse Folk: Past, Present & Future’ project (Stoke Village, Plymouth, UK) led by Rachel Dobbs. Vicky recently exhibited linoleum experiments in ‘Pull My Thread’ at Brantwood House, (Coniston, UK) and flax straw work at ‘Green Making-Materials-Objects’ at the Levinsky Gallery, (Plymouth, UK).⁠ @flax_project ⁠ ⁠ Rachel Dobbs (IRL) is an artist based in Plymouth (UK) whose practice spans a range of collaborative artistic and community-focused projects, all with a strong emphasis on people, relationships, communication and systems of exchange. Rachel’s work as one half of LOW PROFILE has recently featured in Social Fabric (Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange, Penzance), and Faraway Festival Reims (Reims, FR), and their artwork is part of public collections at The Box (Plymouth, UK), Harris Museum, Library & Art Gallery (Preston, UK) and FRAC Champagne-Ardenne (Reims, FR).⁠ ⁠ VENUE⁠ 1. Dawe’s Twineworks, West Coker⁠ ⁠ Photography @katydocking ⁠ ⁠ Od Arts Festival – Thinking in Circles took place 23-25 May 2025 organised by OSR Projects and supported by Arts Council England @aceagrams and we thank National Lottery players @HeritageFundUK ⁠

GEOFF DIEGO LITHERLAND⁠ Within The Surface and Tangle Formations (in D Major) ⁠- Films ⁠ Geoff Diego Litherland had two films on show at Dawe's Twineworks. Geoff has been redefining his artistic practice; discontent with simply depicting an idea of nature and landscape within his work, he sought to delve deeper into the interconnected threads between painting and the environment. He has used slow, pre-industrial craft processes to create natural canvas materials grown from the land and uses weave patterns to generate music and video work.⁠ ⁠ Geoff Diego Litherland was born in Mexico and is currently based in Wirksworth, Derbyshire. In 2012 he completed an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University of London, he is an artist with a considerable exhibition profile, a part-time lecturer at Nottingham Trent University and co-founder of Haarlem Artspace. Litherland explores our relationship to the natural world through an engagement with the materials and processes involved in painting, including the collaborative production of hand woven linen canvas. @geoffdiegolitherland ⁠ @dawes_twineworks ⁠ VENUE⁠ 1. Dawe’s Twineworks, West Coker⁠ ⁠ Photography @katydocking ⁠ ⁠ Od Arts Festival – Thinking in Circles took place 23-25 May 2025 organised by OSR Projects and supported by Arts Council England @aceagrams and we thank National Lottery players @HeritageFundUK ⁠