Miranda Whall

This is a new project…

I have been awarded £25,000 from CO2RE to develop and produce When Peat Speaks and When Peat Speaks: A Boggy Ensemble. The grant forms part of the UK’s national research hub for Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR), part of a broader £30 million initiative funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The creative initiative within the hub is supported by a flexible fund of £150,000 from which seven grants have been awarded to arts and humanities projects.

I will be working within the GGR-Peat Demonstrator Project, one of five interdisciplinary GGR demonstrators funded by UKRI. My focus will be on the Pwllpeiran Research Upland Centre at Aberystwyth University, which is one of the three key sites within the GGR-Peat initiative.

The project, titled When Peat Speaks, will be developed in close consultation with Professor Mariecia Fraser and the team at Pwllpeiran. The work will incorporate a variety of datasets gathered from treatments, measurements, and interventions conducted across 32 plots (20m x 20m each) on a degraded peatland. The project will utilise the scientific data to generate drawings, sculptures, sound notations, and sonic and musical scores.

The performance When Peat Speaks: A Boggy Ensemble will be staged directly on the bog, adjacent to the study area. The ensemble will feature three musicians and a Butoh dancer, responding to the datasets – sound notations and sonic and musical scores to create an immersive exploration of the peatland’s ecological and cultural importance in situ.

This is a unique opportunity for me to contribute to the conversation around Greenhouse Gas Removal, working within the intersection of art and science in a way that will resonate with both academic and public audiences.

The project will run from March 2025 – July 2026.