This upcoming work is a living installation piece that will sit along the National Cycle Route between Elderslie, Johnstone and Kilbarchan in Renfrewshire, responding to a brief that seeks to celebrate the ecology and cultural heritage of the area.

In reference to the area’s weaving history, the installation will play with the form of the jacquard punch card – an encoded card used in early forms of mechanised weaving that were fed into the loom to determine the pattern of a fabric. For the installation, cylinders will be laid out to the pattern of a scaled-up historic jacquard punch card, creating a surface of elevated voids. Just as the holes in the punch card contained the information for a pattern to grow on the loom, so these cylinders become vessels of possibility. Filled with soil, they are fertile ground for plants to colonise and wildlife to inhabit, setting the framework for a new ecological pattern on the site. The installation begins to contain both past and future: held within a historic form, new things begin to grow.

The piece will be created through community participation, with attendees invited to fill the cylinders with soil, collectively creating the conditions for new ecological patterns to emerge. Once established, the piece will continue to encourage an ongoing connection between people and place: raised above the ground, the cylinders will elevate the plants and wildlife that choose to occupy them, allowing people to look again and pay closer attention to their surroundings.