The Last Tree Dreaming project led by the charity, Young People Frome, has launched an exhibition at Frome Museum.
Entitled ‘Selwood: A Forest through Time’, the exhibition is about the local history and heritage of Selwood Forest on the outskirts of Frome and takes visitors through the earliest recorded references to the forest in the Saxon period right up to the present day. The exhibition includes a display of photographs of remaining ancient trees captured by Julian Hight, author of ‘World Tree Story’.
The exhibition, a collaboration between Last Tree Dreaming resident artists, Anthony Rogers and Helen Moore, with the support of team colleagues Barry Cooper and Azeema Caffoor, along with Museum staff, was praised by visitors, including the outgoing mayor, Kate Bielby and other councillors, who attended the opening event on Wednesday 25th May.
The children and young people at the event particularly enjoyed the main feature of the exhibition, a large cabinet depicting a woodland scene with a backdrop of bluebells, and which incorporates traditional woodland artefacts and creatures that once inhabited Selwood Forest, such as the red squirrel and pine marten.
The exhibition also documents the changing fortunes of the landless poor, who relied on the forest for food, fuel for their fires and timber for building rustic shelters, and includes details of the notorious inhabitants at East Woodlands, counterfeiters who engaged in clipping coins.
The Last Tree Dreaming exhibition will be open at Frome Museum from Tuesday to Saturday until 25th August, and will feature various free events and activities during the Frome Festival, including the launch of the Last Tree Dreaming film on Saturday 2nd July, a creative writing workshop with poet Helen Moore on Monday 4th July, and a walk through Selwood Forest with local historian, Michael McGarvie on 6th July.
For more details and booking, please see the Festival brochure.
