This proposal is for a exhibition in BAC at a time that works for both the venue and for me. I am a current AUB MA Photography distinction-level Student and will be completing in December. My work is based on the emerging concept of rewilding as a way of enabling fast and effective nature restoration to aid the biodiversity and climate crises; hence the title, a question that I put to farmers and landowners “What if you just leave it?” referring to their marginal and less-productive land. This will also be the title of the exhibition.

I have interviewed and photographed more than 30 experts, volunteers, farmers, landowners and so on from around the country, and made documentary photographic work about their projects. As such, and as you can see on this website - whatifyoujustleaveit.info - I have a lot of content that I am keen to share with people locally and globally, so my exhibition will be accompanied by social media, a feature blog here, and some local PR, hopefully in collaboration with Warrior PR agency (to be confirmed).

Rewilding is an important and growing part of ‘managing’ our natural landscape, but it is not well understood and often misconstrued in the press and on social media. Sir David Attenborough said in 2020 “We must rewild the world” but many people are unsure what that means. My work is all about ‘unwrapping’ the concept so that people can better understand it and get behind it. To this end I am working with two national charities - Rewilding Britain and Heal Rewilding, and also a new local Charity, West Dorset Wilding. I will be engaging them in the exhibition.

Some of the work I have done is in Dorset and some is wider - I will have a balance of the two and will also link the exhibition to the work I am doing with four local landowners West Dorset Wilding (no website yet) to emphasise that we can work on global issues at a local scale. I am keen to involve the community as much as possible rather than seeing this as a purely art exhibition, and will be exploring ways to do that.