A “Walking Forest” is coming to the streets of Bristol on Saturday 17 June, with live performance, family craft activities and free trees available for visitors to Bristol’s city centre to take home.
The cultural project has been created by The Natural History Consortium, the charity behind Festival of Nature as well as Overstory, a tree inspired art installation with activities involving art and nature that visited Broadmead in the summer of 2022.
Bristol has set a target to double the city’s tree canopy by 2050, as well as the city’s wildlife by the same date. The interactive promenade will invite visitors to imagine Bristol’s streets with more tree cover, and spark conversations about the changes that might be needed for our built environment to create enough spaces for trees in the city.
Local artists Dee Moxon, Ruth Ramsay, Michael Loader and Slater will inspire audiences to explore different zones of the forest including the canopy, undergrowth and forest floor – all on the streets of Bristol’s city centre. Tree experts will be on hand to share more information about Bristol’s ambitions, and how residents can get involved.
Pop-up performances will take place in in Broadmead (10:00 – 11:15am), in Old City (11:45 – 1:30) and on King Street (2:30 – 4pm). Audiences will encounter volunteers becoming “walking trees” and will have the chance to join in with free family activities and hands-on forestry crafts. With 500 fruit trees to giveaway, visitors to the city centre will be invited to join the walking forest by taking a free fruit tree home or to a community space.
The Walking Forest is being delivered as one of the activities under the City Centre and High Streets Recovery and Renewal programme, funded by Bristol City Council and the West of England Combined Authority’s Love our High Streets project.
The programme is part of Festival of Nature, taking place across the West of England between 9-18 June.
Further details can be found at www.festivalofnature.org.uk and the programme will feature across the day on social media @festofnature
For any media enquiries contact Izzy at izzy@bnhc.org.uk
