INSIDE OUT DORSET
Friday 12 – Sunday 21 September
Moors Valley Country Park and Forest
Town Quay, Christchurch
Summerhouse Hill, Yeovil
Corfe Castle
Weymouth
FREE
Inside Out Dorset, the biennial international outdoor arts festival, returns this autumn with a series of free-to-see installations and performances in five extraordinary locations.
And for one Dorset-born artist, it’s a rare chance to showcase their work in front of local audiences like never before. Douglas Dare, whose four albums of largely piano-led avant-pop have won him widespread acclaim and seen him perform at the Royal Albert Hall (and Bridport Arts Centre) this year, grew up on a dairy farm in West Dorset and jumped at the chance to compose the soundtrack for Consequences, a monumental new art installation that will visit hillsides in South Somerset and the Isle of Purbeck as part of Inside Out Dorset.
“I was approached because of my connection to Dorset – in fact our farm was just around the corner from the Cerne Abbas Giant so I saw it regularly when I was a kid,” he explains. “It was very serendipitous as I was between albums and wanting to explore composition.
“It’s essentially a 15-minute piece of music that loops so it feels continuous and sort of unending. It’s a mixture of field recordings and ambient sounds; there are song elements, there’s poetry, spoken word, and layers of clarinet throughout, which to me sound earthy and timeless, but I’ve also brought in more modern harmonies and vocal textures to reflect the fact that this is a new giant, something fresh and forward-looking.”
Essentially a new giant for Dorset, Consequences is a huge temporary artwork that lives on local hillsides. Created as part of Nature Calling, a landmark arts project encouraging audiences to better understand and connect with their local natural landscapes, it is being made by artist Becca Gill’s Radical Ritual company, and after its unveiling at Cerne Abbas, it will be on show at Summerhouse Hill, in Yeovil, on Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 September and again at Corfe Castle on Saturday 20 and Sunday 21 September for Inside Out Dorset.
“It’s a beautiful thing to create new folklore as well as celebrating what has come before, but to create a new legend with new stories by people today, I think that’s really special. I’ve been thinking a lot about artists like PJ Harvey – coincidentally our families know each other, as her family’s farm was up the road from our farm—and Erland Cooper, who draw on nature in really beautiful, grounded ways. It’s going to be a real spectacle.”
Douglas’ soundtrack incorporates ‘This Patch of Land,’ a new poem by Dorset National Landscape commissioned writer Louisa Adjoa Parker inspired by the Dorset landscape, and much else besides. Inspired by the enduring mystery of the Cerne Abbas Giant, Radical Ritual Artistic Director Becca Gill and team worked with the local community to investigate folk traditions, surrealist art-making, and collaborative storytelling to create a new mythical creature for the Dorset National Landscape.
“We did a little residential with six or seven of us, different people involved in the project,” Douglas explains. “We did a game of consequences ourselves and just spoke about the project and what it meant to us – the giant and the folklore behind it – and absorbed all these different perspectives on the subject, then went away to do our separate things. I was doing some field recording and had chalk from the Cerne Abbas Giant, grinding it up and using different materials – branches and berries that were boiled down to make inks – footsteps in mud, real elements of the landscape.
“But I’ve also incorporated the voices of people from the different community groups that are involved, reading the poem. It’s in my voice as well – I speak in received pronunciation, but my family speaks with a strong Dorset accent, so as I’m reading the poetry, I’m leaning into my West Dorset roots, accessing and really embracing that side of me in my work for the first time.”
The collaborative creative game of Consequences originated with Surrealist artists as multiple participants contribute to a single artwork without seeing the previous contributions. When the whole game is revealed to everyone who joined in, the result is a surprise that no single participant could have created alone.
“This game of Consequences has led to questions such as, who owns the land? Who gets to shape its stories? Can we create new myths that empower rather than exclude?” says Becca Gill, artistic director of Radical Ritual. “This artwork is a call to reclaim collective agency over space and narrative – to ‘Be More Giant’.”
Consequences is a Radical Ritual Production, commissioned and produced by Dorset National Landscape for Nature Calling with executive producers the National Landscapes
Association and Activate Performing Arts. It is supported by Arts Council England, DEFRA and Imaginators.
“This festival, more than any other, has been made creatively with the active collaboration of hundreds of people from Dorset, Hampshire and South Somerset engaging with the landscapes and issues,” say Inside Out Dorset co-artistic directors Kate Wood and Bill Gee. “Extraordinary events in extraordinary places have been our focus, distinctive to this county, we believe anything’s possible, and everyone’s invited.”
As well as Consequences, Inside Out Dorset will see four other locations transformed by magical art and dramatic interventions connected by themes of Nature, Landscape and Climate.
River of Hope will see an installation of up to 80 flags and sails on the Town Quay in Christchurch from 12 to 15 September. The culmination of a national project that uses environmental learning and creative arts practice to help young people express their concerns about the climate crisis, it features the music of Dorset-based rapper/producer Isaiah Dreads. Designs created by students from Gillingham School, QE School in Wimborne, Twynham and The Grange Schools in Christchurch, The Burgate School in Fordingbridge, and Ringwood School, working with artist Heidi Steller and poet Matt West, will be shown alongside works made for the Totally Thames festival in partnership with young people from Ethiopia from schools in Addis Ababa and Arbia Minch.
Following its premiere at the National Memorial Arboretum, Dorset artist Lorna Rees’ sound installation Canopy will create a new sound world beneath the trees of Moors Valley Country Park and Forest at Ashley Heath from Saturday, 13 September, for the duration of Inside Out Dorset. Comprising 24 new sound listening pods inspired by nature, visitors will literally listen to the trees and hear stories told by people from community groups and local school children in response to the woodland.
The familiar outline of Corfe Castle will not only provide a spectacular backdrop for the Consequences Giant but also for Inside Out Dorset’s Catalan showcase in the village on Saturday, 20, and Sunday, 21 September, at the National Trust-managed Castle, where admission is free as part of National Heritage Open Days, as well as Sandy Hill Arts and the village hall.
Performances include We Fear, a site-specific promenade piece for Sandy Hill Arts by Eva Marichalar-Freixa and Jordi Duran i Roldós, in collaboration with Dorsetborn, inspired by time spent in the area; and Idiòfona, artist Joan Català’s invitation to spectators to create an idiophone, a large sound installation/musical instrument that plays by vibration.
In Poi by Cie D’es Tro, the incredible world champion spinning top juggler Guillem Vizcaíno explores different types of wood, shapes, and support points, while Arrels by Toc de Fusta is a playful, family-friendly, participatory installation with 16 interactive games and structures inspired by specific cultural traditions from around the world.
The spectacular finale of Inside Out Dorset 2025, Sonnet of Samsara, is a breathtaking performance by Jayachandran Palazhy of Attakalari Dance in Bengalaru, Charlene Low, and Ali Pretty of Kinetika, sponsored by We Are Weymouth, and part of Portland and Weymouth Towns of Culture. The evolving, immersive experience also marks the conclusion of Beach of Dreams, a nationwide coastal arts festival exploring the unique heritage, cultures and climate futures of our coastlines. As the festival’s final moment, participants will weave their way through Weymouth from the town centre to the beach as a living artwork in motion.
