In September, Meadow Arts invited artist Sarah Boulton and a group part of the home-schooling network, to make wild clay clouds in the meadows of The Weir Garden in Herefordshire.

Working with local wild clay, participants found spaces in the large meadow to pause, look up, and mould and mimic the clouds and sky above them. Moving around the meadow, making new clouds or merging our clouds with others to explore the feeling of expanse and open space that the meadows bring. You can read more about the workshop in this blog post written by Sarah below.

Inspired by how expansive the sky felt when I visited the meadows at the Weird Garden, I wanted to
create a participatory workshop that pointed to it, that illustrated the feeling of great space. I sensed
that in order to best experience the sky as I experienced it during my visit, I needed to also emphasise
the ground and the earth beneath our feet. Sometimes in order to really see airy, huge, ephemeral
things like skies and clouds, we need to be touching something small and graspable.

I thought that we should make clouds out of clay; clay clouds. That we could follow the clouds that
change so constantly and unpredictably with our hands via clay, to draw a line between a cloud in the
sky and a cloud in our hands, made of stuff from the earth. Supported by Meadow Arts, I found some
local, wild clay and processed it over a few weeks, ready to handle and sculpt the sky. Clay, like
clouds, is changeable.

You can download some simple instructions so that you can also participate and move in the
way we moved during the workshop to make clay clouds. Please feel free to enjoy at home, in nature,
wherever you can see or imagine the expansive and cloudy sky. Any soft and malleable material is ok
to use. We’d love to see your creations by tagging us on social media @MeadowArts.

Photos by Rose Farrington.

Meadow Arts has been working with National Trust Herefordshire during the summer of 2024 to deliver a programme of artistic activities at The Weir Garden, exploring how visitors can creatively engage with the landscape. The People, Proposition, Landscape project culminated in a final public showcase at The Weir Garden (7 – 22 September). The project is generously funded thanks to support from the UK Government Shared Prosperity Fund.