When Peat Speaks

I have been awarded £25,000 from CO2RE to develop and produce When Peat Speaks which will include A Boggy Gassy Drawing, A Boggy Gassy Cloud – a sculpture and performance/photograph work, and When Peat Speaks: a Boggy Gassy Bubbly Ensemble (part one) and When Peat Speaks: a Boggy Gassy Bubbly Ensemble (part two) – collaborative performances staged on the degraded peat for film in August 2025, and May 2026.

The commission 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 am 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 is being developed in close consultation with Professor Mariecia Fraser and the team at Pwllpeiran. The work incorporates datasets reading methane (CH4), Carbon Dioxide (CO2), temperature and moisture levels gathered from 8 high-resolution soil sensors, and chambers on 32 treatment plots (20m x 20m each) installed from 2023 – 2024 on the ‘cinderella’ degraded peatland.

This unique opportunity enables me to contribute to the conversation around Greenhouse Gas Removal, at the intersection of art and science in a way that I hope will resonate with both academic and public audiences.

The project runs from May 2025 – June 2026.