Are You Lost?

2024–2025

Are You Lost? was a series of film, sound and textile installations across the Forest of Bowland which explored the diverse voices and perspectives of the communities that live around the area. A series of temporary installations were shown across the National Landscape in 2025, both in accessible venues and more remote, largely-unused spaces.

It was produced with the Forest of Bowland National Landscape and Lancaster Arts, and commissioned by Nature Calling, the first national programme of new art commissions by the National Landscapes Association.

Rob worked with both young people and the general public around the fringes of Bowland in creative workshops throughout Winter and Spring of 2024-25. The words, sounds, film, images, drawings, mappings and sculptures produced in these engagements all contributed to the creation of the installations in Summer 2025.

Installations

The artwork opened to the public for the first time at Pendle Festival of Culture on 28 June in partnership with Building Bridges, in Nelson town centre on the outskirts of the Forest of Bowland. It then travelled to Dunsop Bridge on the weekend of 2-3 August, where it was situated in Jinny’s Barn. The final Bowland location for the installation was in the heart of Gisburn Forest on 30-31 August, over a weekend that featured artist workshops and a singing performance. The installation then moved to the Peter Scott Gallery in Lancaster between 2–17 October and the Cruck Barn in Barrowford between 10–12 October as part of the British Textile Biennial, alongside a one-off performance of the soundwork at the National Gallery, London on 19 September.

Film

The installation films have been created using pinhole lenses made with natural materials – including feathers, flower petals, cotton grass, seed pods, skeleton leaves and lichen – by young people in workshops. The filming locations were selected through workshops where people mapped places that held important or special meaning for them across Bowland. These locations revealed rich local stories, life events and moments of meaning. The pinhole films are paired with a Super 8 film shot by a local resident Joe Pye in the immediate aftermath of flash flooding in the Dunsop Valley in the Summer of 1967, offering a creative archiving of the past, present and possible future of the Bowland landscape.

Sound

The installation soundscape is woven with sounds made in the workshops and includes field recordings of birdsong, wind, machinery and weather, and choral improvisations with young people across the Bowland landscape with composer  Jules Evans. The work includes recordings made in Bowland’s streams and pools with hydrophones and in its bedrock, soil and sphagnum moss with geophones. The multi-channel soundscape includes the voices of three local people who attended workshops – Nita Burrows, William Michael Neary and Zainab Maria – narrating texts about the multiple meanings of access in Bowland, assembled from words written in public workshops, field trips, scientific research and historical archives. The narrators reflect on how access to Bowland’s landscapes orbits around openness, imagination and transparency. You can read the narration text here and explore resources on Bowland’s landscape that helped shape it here.

Textiles

The large sculptural textile pieces have been created by Lancashire textile artist Kate O’Farrell, drawing from the cotton mill weaving practices of East Lancashire, the textile traditions of Gujarat, where a significant diaspora in Nelson is from, and natural materials and processes derived from the Bowland landscape. Fabrication techniques include spinning, embroidery, wet and dry felting, botanical contact printing, rust printing and natural dyeing using gorse, bracken, rowan, birch, oak and peat. One piece has been created from felted wool gathered from Bowland farms, whilst the others are based on hand-woven cotton khadi made by artisan weavers in Gujurat. Together with the sound and film installation, the textiles shuttle between the inside and outside of the Bowland landscape, revealing a place shaped by its links to the wider world. Read an interview with Kate in Selvedge Magazine.

Community

Are You Lost? has emerged through creative workshops, walks, talks and activities with communities both in the centre and across the fringes of Bowland. Hundreds of people have lent their voices, perspectives and skills to help shape the artwork over Winter 2024 and Spring 2025. In particular, young people from Yes Hub, the This is Nelson youth group, Lomeshaye Junior School and Marsden Heights Community College in Nelson, Bowland High School, and SELFA in Bentham have been central to this process. You can hear many of their voices through the installation, and in the project podcasts. You can read a piece of writing from Zainab Maria from Yes Hub titled ‘Home in the Hills: a Manifesto’ on the Lancaster Arts website.

You can see Rob and his young collaborators on BBC Countryfile, and listen to him discuss the project on the Uncanny Landscapes podcast, on the UK Civil Service Climate & Environment Network podcast, and in conversation with ecotherapist Dr Ruth Allen on the Nature Calling podcast.

An excerpt of Rob’s Lord of Bowland lecture on art, archives and landscape history – reflecting on community engagement with the John Weld archive in Are You Lost? – is published on Caught by the River.

You can keep track of Are You Lost? through the project podcast.

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