Taking Your Dog To Work With You.

The only other time I can think of an example of this, was when I visited a very very posh school like Hogwarts in the Weald of Kent. I met two art teachers who greeted me in the car park with a couple of terriers. I could not stop thinking what it would have been like if I had taken a Jack Russel with me back when I was at my compreshensive school? We walked around the school grounds, it was a kind of open air meeeting on the move with dogs. That was exactly what we did the other day except I brought my own dog along! You must be in the right job if you can take your dog to work with you?

We walked around what is called at the moment 'the wheel chair path'. This was with staff from Kent Wildlife Trust, another terrier called Fletcher and Cosmo. We pooled our ideas together to start designing a woodland trail. This already has a new firm walkway  just over a mile long so wheel chair users are encouraged to enjoy the woods. We are now looking to install sensory features and other artworks and points of interest along this route.

the trees are bare now and you can see more clearly how the wood passes from one area to another

We have made a list of 21 features which has some very optomistic ideas and others which are much smaller and easily achievable. Design workshops/field trips will be arranged with some local schools to move this forward and generate community interest in changes happening in the Blean Woodlands.

My next task then is to construct some kind of visualisation of the proposed elements along this trail and how these things can be realised, what they are made of and how they are constructed. Some features will require skills and knowledge from other people or organisations, including volunteers labour to carry out, make and install these things.

I have just picked 3 random numbers between 1-21 and these are my notes for what corresponds to

No.4: The Heron. A symbol of the Herne Bay area. A giant woven sculpure using willow or chestnut. Story teller to visit schools to generate creation stories/ local myths about herons and why they are significant to the area. (My childrens school badge has a heron on even).

No.15: Semi curcular seating area. Cut from secret oak store for special items? Carvings inspired by woodland flora and fauna and the designs generated from school workshops on this bench.

No.20: Entrance feature to wheel chair path created from two odly curved pine tree trunks. The curves enable an arch to be constructed, this would resemble a 'whale bone jaw'. It would be very big.

Cosmo in a freezing cold stream
(even in the winter with ice foating in it he does this!)

Cosmo came home and lazed about for the rest of the day laying across doorways blocking entrances, just generally flaked out after a busy morning looking for squirrels and searching for whatever it is he is looking for