The Sign of the Underground is a New Leaf commission for Arts Council England funded nature based visual art program across the West Midlands for nine artists, creating visual Biophilic (love of nature) artworks, co-production relational workshops and exhibitions. Commissioned artists have created artwork symbols and worked with communities to navigate underground and underwater tendrils connecting people and species, the rural and urban. Working with science partners including the society for the protection of underground networks, to create content for workshops and exhibition events have taken place with young people & vulnerable adults in:

1. Cannock Chase with 14 schools for the Great Imagining Channock Chase.
2. The National Trust’s Brookhampton Estate Herefordshire with Birmingham Children’s Trust, Sandwell Children’s Trust, Hansdworth Association of Schools and Dolphin Women’s Centre.
3. Ward End Park Birmingham with Birmingham Children’s trust Youth Offending Team and Dolphin Women’s Centre.
4. NEC Birmingham for the STEM Big Bang Fair with Climate Museum UK and 1500 key sage 2 and 3 pupils from around the country.

An artist-led gathering of 3 areas of subterranean tendrils which includes:

1. The latest scientist research on the wood wide web’s mycorrhizal network (that connects the roots of trees and fungi), Biophilia (love of nature), fossil fuel extraction and environmental justice.
2. Linking these hidden pathways with what is underfoot in cities and towns, (pollution, pipes. cables, water).
3. Connecting nature with underground grass roots eco-movements and marginalized communities.   

We want to approach a series of relational workshops, exhibitions and experiences. Creating proactive agency between artists and communities West to East across England from North Herefordshire to Birmingham and East Anglia with the blue and green (water ways and parks) places around them. To help participants become more able to adapt to the earth crisis and cope with eco-anxiety.

The project tells us we are nature and that nature is creative, we can all feel this through our imagination. That our artists working with our community, public, research, nature conservation, and sustainability partners will help us connect to and engage with many people in the project.

‘Its really effective what you are doing, and activity is much better than lots of information going over their heads’ Vivian Big Bang Volunteer Engineer

‘The way you are doing this is more effective than how we teach biology, by making it about the links between humans and plants, it makes it much more interesting and accessible for them.’ Science school teacher Big Bang Fair.

‘I think it’s great to get kids to draw nature it shows everyone how they see it. Erica Big Bang Volunteer Geography degree student Nottingham University.