Through my creative practice and doctoral research, and a close study of Dorothy Wordsworth and her female contemporaries' approaches to, and ways of engaging with, landscape, I have developed the Seven Scenographic Principles. These principles apply the concept of the feminine 'material' sublime, offering a counterpoint to the traditionally dominant masculine or 'transcendent' sublime. Rather than understanding landscape as something to be conquered, escaped or transcended, they propose ways of being present to the material world through walking, observation, embodiment and creative practice.

Together, the principles provide a framework for creating socially engaged walking-performances in rural and mountainous landscapes. They have informed projects including The Gathering / Yr Helfa, Warnscale, Dorothy's Room, Women's Walks to Remember, Fissure, and more recent work, and continue to evolve through my research, publications and creative practice.

The Seven Scenographic Principles

The Seven Scenographic Principles provide a framework for creating site-specific walking-performance in rural and mountainous landscapes. Although they are presented separately, they are intended to work together, informing both the research process and the creative making of each project.

1. Being Located

Beginning with the specificity of place, the principle combines site, biological and social science, and the knowledge of people whose lived experiences relate directly to the work. Drawing on Donna Haraway's concept of "situated knowledges", it values partial, embodied and interdisciplinary ways of knowing. 

2. Auto-Biography / Ethnography

Working from first-person perspectives and lived experience, this principle gives voice to life-events that often sit outside mainstream cultural narratives. It creates opportunities for people to "reappear" through creative practice by acknowledging experiences that may otherwise remain unseen or unspoken. 

3. Landscape and Environmental Forces as Metaphors for Self

Geological formations, weather, rivers, plants, animals and seasonal processes become more than scenery. They function as metaphors through which participants can think differently about themselves, their experiences and their relationships with the world around them. 

4. Composing the Scene

Walking-performances emerge through a hybrid composition of landscape and imagination. Objects, text, movement, sound, science, film and the physical characteristics of place are brought together to create scenographic encounters that arise from, and remain rooted within, the landscape itself.