Ilam Park.

During our visit to Ilam I took on board Richard longs methods of working - walking. I thought it was really great how we had specific time set out for us to experience the world around us, to walk and pay attention more than you would in everyday life. I personally payed specific attention to the textures all around me and I got some great photographs and rubbings - I spent some of my time taking rubbings of the textures I found and noting down and taking note of what the object was, on some I also wrote down what I could hear and how I felt, this was in response to the work shops we did at the beginning of the retreat.
I feel that I got a lot from the retreat, meeting new people, experiencing the world the way others choose too, and I got a lot of material to work with for the exhibition we're taking part in but also my own studio practice, I found a lot of the things we did related to my own work in some way, especially the theme of journeys.
The night time walk we did was also a great experience, even though I was reluctant to go at first but I'm glad I did go, because yet again we were looking at the world in a completely different way than we usually do, I found that in the day I never really payed much attention to the terrain on the field where the fossils were, but at night time when you couldn't see the terrain you could feel it more and I got a real sense of how steep and uneven the ground was just by using my feet instead of my eyes for once.
Overall I really enjoyed the retreat and learning about other disciplines and I would defiantly do it all over again.