Each year we will work with the same group of students to develop a shared understanding of our connection to folk art and its potential within our futures.

Working with teachers across the curriculum to respond to artworks in the Folk Art collection, the wider school will participate in this celebration and investigation into the relevance of folk art today.   

Creativity: shared, taught and passed on

This project is under the umbrella of Folk Exchange, our wider programme to redefine folk art as a dynamic and evolving cultural practice, rooted in lived experience and shared storytelling.

Folk Exchange is not a single exhibition, but a growing ecosystem of activity. At its core is a belief in creativity as something that is shared, taught, and passed on – not just housed in museums. 

Folk Exchange is about more than just objects. It’s about the knowledge people carry, the stories they tell, and the ways creativity is shared across generations. We’re not just updating a gallery – we’re building a conversation that includes everyone. 

Youth voices at the centre: Folk Ecologies

Kineton students are working directly with artists, curators and producers to explore objects in the Folk Art collection through the lenses of humour and ecology. Led by the students’ ideas, we’re exploring connections between the past and the issues that matter most to them today. 

Each year the students will choose themes that interest them, determined through exploratory workshops. They will discuss their ideas based on the objects in our collection and live research around folk and the environment, and then get the chance to develop these ideas through artist-led creative workshops.

This will culminate in an annual activation, an event or display in Compton Verney’s Folk Art gallery or grounds.  

Youth panel

The group are our new Folk Ecologies Youth panel. Through project activities, the young co-curators are generating new insights into a collection often seen as anonymous and static.

Their responses are already shaping how the collection is understood and could influence how it is displayed in future.

Working alongside artists, curators and researchers, the panel are bringing fresh perspectives shaped by protest, digital culture, climate change and new forms of community life. 

Wildlife Tricksters

When we met the students for the first time, we looked at the decoys and dazzlers in the collection. Decoys were aids used in hunting and agriculture alongside other scarers and attractors such as scarecrows.

During workshops with local artists Juneau Projects, the students developed designs to make their own decoys, incorporating movement and sound into their decoys inspired by the Whistling Partridge Decoys and mirror-studded Lark Decoy in the gallery. 

Decoys used carefully crafted dynamics of mimicry, deception and dazzling, to stun, confuse, or deceive animals. The decoys in our gallery were practical objects, handcrafted, carried, and set out in various environments, becoming theatrical additions to the landscape.

In some cultures, similar objects are placed in the hunt environment to guide spirits. Histories of hunting have focused on the heroic chase, but traps and decoys tell an important story of the common folk, dispossession and poaching, as well as the evolution of technology through human cunning.  

The students began by exploring colour perception. Using fluorescent camouflage drawings, they observed how their bird decoys vanished and reappeared under coloured lights due to the reflection and absorption of different wavelengths.

Birds have a greater visual ability than humans, extending into the ultraviolet range, and some can even focus on near and far objects simultaneously. Making decoys for non-human eyes is therefore a challenging and detailed task.

These shapes were laser-cut from students’ drawings, a process that uses a concentrated beam of infrared light. Students considered how new technologies influence forms of self-taught making today, and how genres of craft, design, and art are increasingly blurred. 

Once finished, we experimented by placing decoys out in the grounds at Compton Verney, wondering where they might be most convincing to other wildlife, and testing to see if we had an multi-species interaction… 

Pop into the gallery to see the Decoy! display in full. 

Still to come

Together with the students, we’ve been thinking a bit more about the word ‘ecology’ – what it means to us to be part of larger ecosystems and networks, and how this affects our individual creativity and connection.

We looked at otter poo, thought about our neighbourhoods and construction, air pollution, the meat industry, games and music.

Videogames, make-up, cooking, painting and design were all popular ideas of how young people might express themselves creatively. 

In the spring, students will work with artist Chris Poolman, whose work explores folklore and contemporary life through oral histories, cob clay and sculpture. These workshops will be an opportunity to explore some of their new ideas around Folk Ecologies, and delve further into themes about games, characters, movement, climate and migration.   

Folk Ecologies is delivered by Compton Verney’s Folk Art Curator, Ila Colley and Science and Environment Producer, Grace Brindle.