Stone Club Walks and Talks

Jeremy Deller joins Matthew Shaw for a conversation about the triumph or art, rave music, stone circles, film making, brass bands, steel bands, activism, identity and so much more. Always a joy! I't's always a pleasure to hear from Jeremy.

Today Gwenno joins Matthew Shaw for a conversation about language, landscape, culture and of course Gwenno's music across the years including her fantastic latest album Utopia.

Today our guest is Einar Selvik, musician, singer and ethnomusicologist. Einar is the founder of the band Wardruna. We talk about ancient sites, nature, wild places, landscape and Einar's life growing up in Norway. We talk about music, poetry, archaeology, playing drums in metal bands and the beginnings and evolution of Wardruna up to the present day. We also discuss Wardruna's new album Birna.

From the deep woods now emerges Birna, Wardruna’s sixth studio album. Through his restless dialogue with nature, main composer Einar Selvik has been searching for the voice of the bear, resulting in this upcoming release, scheduled for January 2025.

Birna – the she-bear in Old Norse – is a work of art dedicated to the guardian of the forest, nature’s caretaker, and her battles here on earth. Slowly driven out of her habitat by modern day societies, she has entered a stage of permanent hibernation. As a result, the forest is gradually dying, longing for its pulse and heart – its shepherd. Birna calls for her return.

Today we talk with Hayden Thorpe about Orford Ness, about the power of place, about, nature, rewilding and the creation of Hayden's new lp Ness.

Hayden Thorpe is the Cumbrian solo artist, formerly of Wild Beasts.  Using a process of redaction, Thorpe brings songs to life from the pages of best-selling author Robert Macfarlane’s book of the same name. Ness is inspired by Suffolk’sOrford Ness, the former Ministry of Defence weapons development site during both World Wars and the Cold War. Acquired by the National Trust in 1993 and left to re-wild, it to this day remains a place of paradox, mystery and constant evolution.

Today we talk with authors and activists Amy-Jane Beer and Lewis Winks on behalf of Right to Roam. We talk about a new report published today that is all about inaccesible ancient sites. We discuss access islands and the imortance of being able to walk freely in the coutryside. We discuss the Right to Roam movement, why it is important and how people can get involved. We talk about access to nature and the health benefits of being in nature, becoming closer to nature and being nature!

"Right to Roam" is a colloquial way of describing an ancient custom that gives anyone the freedom to wander in open countryside, whether the land is privately or publicly owned. In countries such as Norway, Sweden, Estonia and Scotland it has long existed as a common right, a defining concept of nationhood, and has only recently been codified into law.

In today's episode we talk with aritst and writer Jackie Morris & stained glass artist Tamsin Abbott. We discuss Jackie and Tamsin's forthcoming book Wild Folk: Tales from the Stones. We discuss the ancient sites and tales that make up the book as well as the process of how the book was created. We talk about art, imagination and nature and discuss some of the authors that have influenced Jackie and Tamsin.

WILD FOLK is a beautifully illustrated sequence of seven tales, marking the first book length collaboration between the storyteller artists, Tamsin Abbott and Jackie Morris.

Each of the seven tales are fables of transformation and power, summoned from the ancient stones beneath our feet and transformed by word and image into portals between past and future. The tales are neither new nor old. They are full of ‘wild folk’, shape-shifting spirits that carry the energy that connects all things.

Today we feature Lally MacBeth, founder of The Folk Archive and Stone Club co-founder. We chat about The Folk Archive, Lally's Magazine The Folk Review and also about The Lost Folk, Lally's forthcoming debut book which is due to be published by Faber in June 2025. We discuss folk customs, folk music Krampus and a very large snowman.

Lally MacBeth is an artist, writer & curator based in Cornwall, England. Lally graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2013 with a First Class Honours in Fashion History & Theory, and has since divided her time between being sensible and silly. Her work wanders the line between the real and the imaginary, taking in history, folklore, performance, ritual, and artifice along the way. She is interested in the links between high and low cultural artefacts and how these lines are often blurred in archives.

In this episode we talk with artist Alex Hartley about his latest artwork The Summoning Stones which features in the exhibition Dartmoor: A Radical Landscape at RAMM.

We talk about Alex's practice with sculpture and photography. About walks on Dartmoor, the energy of ancient standing stones and the transfer of energy with modern technology. We discuss access to nature and climate change and Alex's artistic influences.

Alex Hartley is an artist whose work destabilises ideas of both iconic architecture and nature by exploring our understanding of utopian ideologies. Extending into ambitious works of land art, employing his practice to test our notions of utopia, the individual, and the critical relationship we have with the environment that questions how we occupy the world's wild places.

In this episode we talk with archaeologist Dr Jennifer Wexler about Stonehenge, Grime's Graves, Thronborough Henges and ancient Cornish sites as well as discussing Jennifer's journey in archaeology and in curating exhibitions. Including work in Sicily and the USA.

Jennifer works as a prehistorian for English Heritage and is the former Project curator of The World of Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum. She specializes in archaeological landscapes, and the prehistoric and ancient archaeology of the Mediterranean and Western Europe.

We talk with Folk singer and activist Sam Lee about Songdreaming, about Folk songs, about nature and access to nature, about singing at Stonehenge and ancient sites. We talk about Pilgrimage, Wild Service and the Right to Roam movement.

Sam Lee plays a unique role in the British music scene. A Mercury prize nominated singer, highly inventive and original arranger, folksong interpreter, passionate conservationist, song collector and creator of live events. Sam’s work as an artist has shaken up the music scene breaking boundaries between traditional and contemporary music and the assumed places and ways folksong is appreciated.