About
The Hedgesong Collective is a collaborative arts project devoted to the celebration, honouring and knowing of trees. We collect, share and teach traditional and contemporary folk songs and lore about trees and plants in a variety of community settings, as well as recording and sharing videos online.
The Hedgesong Collective was formed from a shared love of trees, song and folk traditions. We believe that in order to connect with, protect and love something, we must have a felt relationship with it, a knowledge of it, and ways of honouring and celebrating it.
The arts offer us an opportunity to journey into relationship with the more-than-human world through embodied creative expression. Folk song, folklore and ancient traditions can teach us about our cultural histories alongside trees and plants, connect us with ancestry, and bring this alive within our communities through the medicinal acts of communal singing, celebrative art-making and collaborative learning.
We believe that through reviving and reclaiming communal ecological and mythological knowledge of the living world, we can imagine more regenerative futures.
Hedgesong Collective promotes and facilitates an interdisciplinary approach to fostering relationships with trees and plants. We use the mediums of song, storytelling, scientific and ecological knowledge, folk herbalism, crafts, writing, and any other artform or form of knowledge that people want to bring. We welcome contribution and collaboration from all individuals and communities, and are immensely grateful to everyone who has contributed and reached out to Hedgesong to date!
Workshops
We lead participatory workshops and walks that fuse teaching songs, knowledge and folklore about trees and plants at community land projects, festivals, forest schools and more.
Our workshops are tailored to the flora of the site, and are inclusive spaces of creative sharing and participation.
Do you know a folk song about a tree, or have you composed one yourself? We are building a collection of songs old and new, mainly written about or involving specific tree species or tree-related folk customs and issues.
We’re creating our own video recordings of songs, as well as gathering those already recorded, that people may be happy for us to share on our website and social media.
If you want to add a song to this growing and collaborative collection, please get in touch via the Contact page – alternatively our email is info@hedgesong.co.uk.
