Wild

David Gelsthorpe (Curator), Alexandra Alberda (Curator), Hannah-Lee Chalk (Curator), Rachel Webster (Curator), Anna Bunney (Curator), Dmitri Logunov (Curator), Diana Arzuza Buelvas (Curator)

Research output: Non-textual formExhibition

Abstract

Press release: New exhibition at Manchester Museum goes ‘wild’ for tackling climate and biodiversity crisis

Wild
Supported by the Garfield Weston Foundation
5 June 2024 to 1 June 2025
Press view 4 June 2024, 10am-1pm

Wild, an exhibition that explores our relationship with the natural world and unique approaches to environmental recovery, opens at Manchester Museum on 5 June 2024. The exhibition will look at how people are creating, rebuilding and repairing connections with nature, and how we can tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis by making the world more wild.

Visitors will be introduced to five wild places across the globe and hear a diverse range of voices, from Aboriginal elders to researchers and community activists, to discover how they are all looking to ‘wild’ for a more positive future. In one case, the restoration of traditional practices is helping to heal both the land and the people. In others, biodiversity has exploded where farmland has been rewilded and the reintroduction of animal species is helping to restore ecological balance.

Featuring an immersive installation, audio, film and interactive elements, alongside natural history collections and artworks, the exhibition prompts visitors to notice the biodiversity and heritage of wild places and invites us to question our relationships with the natural world.

The featured wild places are Manchester; Knepp Rewilding Project, West Sussex; Lamlash Bay, Arran, North Ayrshire; Noongar Nowanup Boodja, Western Australia; and Yellowstone National Park, USA.

These places have historically been shaped by people to support farming, hunting, fishing, housing and industry - frequently to the detriment of the health of land, people and nature, and leading to a significant reduction in biodiversity and kinship connections between plants, animals, people and place.

At the Knepp Rewilding Project in West Sussex, a failing farm has been rewilded and transformed into a place of natural abundance. In 2002 free-roaming grazers were introduced to transform the land and recreate dynamic and biodiverse ecosystems. Knepp is one of the UK’s leading rewilding sites and an experiment in land stewardship that prioritises biodiversity.

On Arran, a decade-long community-led campaign in direct response to overfishing and dredging, culminated in Scotland’s first No Take Zone being established in 2008. This protected area in Lamlash Bay is enabling the local marine ecosystem to flourish, and highlights the importance of conserving our precious blue spaces to help tackle biodiversity loss and climate change.

More than 100 years ago native bushland was cleared by colonial settlers in Western Australia to establish farmland. An Aboriginal-led cultural revegetation project, Nowanup Noongar Boodja, is healing Country to heal people. The Country is being revitalised through planting and the return of traditional practices, showing the importance of making decisions for current and future generations that strengthen cultural connections with the past.

Yellowstone National Park, the USA’s first national park established in 1872, played a pivotal role in the birth of ‘fortress conservation’ and the ‘wilderness movement’ and saw the forced removal of Indigenous people. The exhibition explores how the impact of colonial violence wiped out the area’s native wolves and later a government-level decision to reintroduce wolves impacted local communities and their relationships with wildlife. Today, the reintroduction of wolves is contributing to the restoration of ecological balance to the area.

The balance between landscaped and abandoned spaces in post-industrial urban landscapes are examined in the context of Manchester’s ambition to become a 'greener' city that embraces nature. The exhibition raises questions about the biodiversity of man-made green spaces and the challenges of coexisting with nature in urban environments.

Wild also explores how the natural world has traditionally been presented and idealised through Western art, from pastoral scenes to epic landscapes, and representations in popular culture, from Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows to CBeebies’ Octonauts.

Curator of Earth Science Collections, David Gelsthorpe, said:

“Wild aims to provide hope in the face of a situation that often leaves many of us feeling pessimistic. The exhibition highlights work being done by communities right now, to build stronger relationships with nature and shape their world for the better. This isn't simply theoretical thinking, it is impactful, practical action that is already achieving positive results. We hope Wild inspires visitors to better understand their own relationship with the natural world and empowers them to take action, however big or small."

Manchester Museum Director Esme Ward added:

“Wild is one of Europe’s first large-scale exhibitions to look at how people are working to make the world around them more ‘wild’. As the world’s first Carbon Literate museum, with a mission to build a more sustainable planet, we set out to share new stories and perspectives, from the local to the global, that could inspire us all to collaborate in creating a fairer future. It is this spirit that sits at the heart of Wild.”
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 2024

Keywords

  • Nature
  • Nature and culture
  • wild
  • wilderness
  • conservation
  • Wildlife conservation
  • wildlife
  • urban biodiversity
  • exhibition
  • plants
  • botany
  • animals
  • nature conservation
  • Indigenous knowledge systems

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