Off the beaten track
Capability Brown’s garden designs changed the way people saw the landscape in the 18th century. This year, his 300th birthday is providing a chance to do the same in the 21st century, says Caroline Ikin
Today’s much-loved television gardening stars, such as Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh, are household names, but it is unlikely any of them will have the lasting impact of the original celebrity gardener, Lancelot “Capability” Brown.
This year marks the tercentenary of the birth of Brown, whose work changed our perception of the English landscape. He led the fashion for natural landscapes and was responsible for sweeping away the formal parterres, angular canals and symmetry of the 17th century garden, announcing to aristocratic landowners that their estates did indeed have ‘capabilities’.
Brown worked at more than 260 estates in England and five in Wales, and at least 150 of these parkland landscapes survive with their serpentine lakes, clumps of trees and views of their surrounding “borrowed” landscapes. We think of these landscapes today as quintessentially English, part of the natural fabric of the countryside, but they were, in fact, artfully constructed with much earth moving, tree-planting and water engineering to give the impression of natural elegance and informality. Although the landscapes remain as evidence of his genius, the man himself has been mostly forgotten.
This year’s Capability Brown Festival has been developed to increase public awareness of Brown and his achievements. Backed by £911,100 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), the scheme has taken off and become a nationwide celebration.
“Capability Brown’s contribution to this country’s landscape heritage deserves to be better known,” says Drew Bennellick, the head of landscape and natural heritage at the HLF. “This festival is an ideal opportunity for people to discover the far-reaching legacy of a man who shaped our idea of the quintessential English countryside.”
The festival is managed by the Landscape Institute along with 21 partners, including VisitBritain, the National Trust, the Historic Houses Association, the Gardens Trust, Historic Royal Palaces and Heritage Open Days.
The festival has three aims: to celebrate the work of Brown, to increase public access to his landscapes that are not normally open to visitors, and to encourage a diverse audience to discover and appreciate his landscapes. The legacy will be a greater appreciation of our designed landscape, an aspect of our heritage not always fully recognised.
Tradition and innovation
As well as the traditional tours, talks and exhibitions, some innovative thinking has been employed to appeal to younger age groups and an urban demographic, seeking to encourage different ways to explore the landscape and reveal its relevance today.
“Brown’s landscapes form a rich part of our cultural heritage, but they tend to be thought of in the same way they tend to be photographed – pristine and empty,” says Ceryl Evans, the director of the Capability Brown Festival.
“We know there are a lot of people who have never explored one, and would not think about doing so, which is why we challenged Brown sites to come up with ways to engage new audiences with their landscapes, tempting visitors to venture further into them, to explore and understand them. The venues have come up with some fantastic projects: dancing, geocaching [treasure hunts using GPS technology], making art, bug hunting, and countless other activities in Brown landscapes this year.”
Six pilot projects were launched in 2014 to explore different audience development techniques and reviewed to form the basis of the full HLF bid. They included a poetry slam at Croome in Worcestershire involving participants from inner-city Birmingham [see box] and a film-making project at Stowe in Buckinghamshire aimed at 14-25 year-olds from deprived communities nearby. The festival has now allocated funding to 21 audience development projects, with grants of between £500 and £5,000 awarded to cover costs ranging from historical interpreters and art materials to health and safety and volunteer expenses.
Chatsworth in Derbyshire is being funded by the festival to reach out to children in care, children with life-limiting medical conditions and refugees, with projects to encourage these groups to explore Brown’s work in the landscape. And Castle Ashby in Northamptonshire is running a series of events with Northamptonshire Gardens Trust linked to Black History Month, looking at the role of the transatlantic slave trade at the wealthy estates that Brown designed. Other sites are offering simple incentives to attract reluctant audiences, such as free entry to celebrate Brown’s birthday in August.
The festival is also tackling the issue of physical access to sites. With little or no public transport available at most, visiting Brown’s landscapes is a challenge to those without the use of a car.
Access all areas
This reliance on car travel also poses the question of environmental responsibility. Some of the properties involved have already put transport plans in place, but for those that haven’t the festival is appointing a sustainable transport adviser who will respond to the challenge of environmentally responsible travel.
At Compton Verney in Warwickshire, free transport by coach – the “Capability Brown Express” – will target hard-to-reach audiences from the local community, while other sites will be promoting cycling trails and tours, as at Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire. Tractor rides or horse-drawn carriages will make the wider parkland more accessible, as well as allowing visitors the opportunity to move through the landscape as Brown intended, and will appeal not just to those with restricted mobility but to people who lack the confidence to explore.
Exploration of the landscape is the focus for many family events, from orienteering to bioblitz bug surveys, with the emphasis on learning through discovery. History, geography, art, wildlife and conservation are all subjects easily accessible through Brown’s landscapes, and all rich material for engaging school groups. Stowe is introducing “Brown’s Boxes”, a themed resource for schools linked to the national curriculum, and urban schools in the West Midlands and Lancashire are being encouraged to visit Weston Park in Shropshire with the offer of a package that includes free transport, food, admission and activities.
Many of the events are volunteer-led, tapping into the expertise of County Gardens Trusts, NADFAS and other local groups. These partnerships are intended to boost community participation as well as foster opportunities for lifelong learning, benefits that will continue and expand well beyond the scope and timeframe of the festival.
With so many diverse events taking place across the country, the festival website forms the linchpin of the celebrations that were launched in 2014, with momentum gradually building towards this, the tercentenary year. The website includes details of all the events taking place and an interactive map of Brown-landscaped sites, as well as a regular blog. Further resources will be added as the festival progresses, including downloadable leaflet-maps and a specially commissioned animation on Brown’s life and work. This digital presence is extended with social media to reach a wider audience, although when funding ceases in early 2017 this will no longer be an active platform for promoting the festival legacy.
The branding is distinctive, with a logo designed and donated by Kolab (who also built the website) and a licence from Bridgeman Images to use a portrait of Brown from c.1770 by the artist Richard Cosway from a private collection, which has become the “face” of the festival. This branding is being made available to participating sites, and unites the disparate activities and venues of the festival, appearing locally, nationally and even internationally. VisitEngland is helpfully promoting the festival as part of its 2016 Year of the English Garden campaign.
Adding dimensions
Museums are already capitalising on the publicity generated by this year of festivities: Harrogate’s Mercer Art Gallery is staging the major exhibition Noble Prospects: Capability Brown and the Yorkshire Landscape (24 June–11 September), and many smaller museums are scheduling displays and exhibitions to tie in with the festival too. Most of the material available for display is two-dimensional, so curators face the challenge of creating visually appealing shows with maps, letters and bills.
Rather than focusing on historical interpretation, some museums are using Brown as the inspiration for contemporary art projects. Orleans House in Twickenham is staging Capability Now, an exhibition that includes modern interpretations of Brown’s ideas in a range of media, while Weston Park in Shropshire is planning a series of art exhibitions exploring Brown’s legacy, and the Embroiderers’ Guild is exhibiting a collection of work inspired by Brown’s landscapes at over 40 venues across the country.
The Granary Art Gallery in Shropshire is also hosting an exhibition about Brown. “This gives us the opportunity to reflect Brown’s legacy, but also to demonstrate the antithesis to his aesthetic,” says Gareth Williams, the curator and head of learning at the gallery.
The scale of the festival gives a wide enough scope to engage new audiences while, at the same time, encouraging traditional audiences to explore the subject in different ways. The many various events that are part of the festival will be encountered in some unexpected places, from cafes offering “Capabili-teas”, Brownies (inevitably), to church bells ringing non-stop to celebrate Brown’s baptism.
Other dispensations include a special category, “Capability Brown Today”, in the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition, a children’s playground with a serpentine-shaped sandpit inspired by Brown’s lakes, a piece of music composed in response to the landscape, site-specific art installations, dance performances, a sponsored bike ride, and a biodiversity conference on what Brown did for ecology.
“The Capability Brown Festival is of course celebrating Brown the man, but our main purpose is to nurture his enlightened thinking and ensure his landscapes are open to and interpreted for as wide a range of visitors as possible,” says Ceryl Evans. “This work will pay dividends this year but also long after the festival is over, ensuring Brown’s significant legacy continues to be acknowledged, and lives on.”
The success of the festival will be measured by what happens beyond the tercentenary, and whether enthusiastic new audiences continue to engage with the designed landscape.
None of them had been to Croome before – most had never visited a National Trust property. After exploring the landscape and researching Brown’s involvement in the site, the participants responded to it through poetry and music, culminating in a performance of their work. The audience then voted “Visionary” or “Vandal”, based on the arguments presented in the poetry – an innovative, engaging way of encouraging them to consider Brown’s impact on the landscape. Afterwards, a short video was posted on YouTube and the poems were published on the festival website.
Beatfreeks’ mission is “To enable brands and organisations to better understand, respect and engage young people. To empower young people to organise themselves with purpose by providing real life contexts where they are valued for their expertise and creative input.”
By bringing this pioneering social enterprise to the National Trust, the Capability Brown Festival is fulfilling its role in facilitating audience development at sites. Of the participants at the poetry slam, everyone enjoyed their time at Croome; importantly for the project’s legacy, all of them said they would now be more likely to visit a heritage property.
Rachel Sharpe, who worked on the project, says: “The Poetry Slam was a resounding success for us here at Croome, and we felt privileged to have had the opportunity to work with new talent on such an innovative project.” This year, Beatfreeks will be working on a similar project in the Brown landscape at Warwick Castle.
This year marks the tercentenary of the birth of Brown, whose work changed our perception of the English landscape. He led the fashion for natural landscapes and was responsible for sweeping away the formal parterres, angular canals and symmetry of the 17th century garden, announcing to aristocratic landowners that their estates did indeed have ‘capabilities’.
Brown worked at more than 260 estates in England and five in Wales, and at least 150 of these parkland landscapes survive with their serpentine lakes, clumps of trees and views of their surrounding “borrowed” landscapes. We think of these landscapes today as quintessentially English, part of the natural fabric of the countryside, but they were, in fact, artfully constructed with much earth moving, tree-planting and water engineering to give the impression of natural elegance and informality. Although the landscapes remain as evidence of his genius, the man himself has been mostly forgotten.
This year’s Capability Brown Festival has been developed to increase public awareness of Brown and his achievements. Backed by £911,100 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), the scheme has taken off and become a nationwide celebration.
“Capability Brown’s contribution to this country’s landscape heritage deserves to be better known,” says Drew Bennellick, the head of landscape and natural heritage at the HLF. “This festival is an ideal opportunity for people to discover the far-reaching legacy of a man who shaped our idea of the quintessential English countryside.”
The festival is managed by the Landscape Institute along with 21 partners, including VisitBritain, the National Trust, the Historic Houses Association, the Gardens Trust, Historic Royal Palaces and Heritage Open Days.
The festival has three aims: to celebrate the work of Brown, to increase public access to his landscapes that are not normally open to visitors, and to encourage a diverse audience to discover and appreciate his landscapes. The legacy will be a greater appreciation of our designed landscape, an aspect of our heritage not always fully recognised.
This anniversary is an ideal opportunity to discover the legacy of a man who shaped our idea of the English countryside"
Tradition and innovation
As well as the traditional tours, talks and exhibitions, some innovative thinking has been employed to appeal to younger age groups and an urban demographic, seeking to encourage different ways to explore the landscape and reveal its relevance today.
“Brown’s landscapes form a rich part of our cultural heritage, but they tend to be thought of in the same way they tend to be photographed – pristine and empty,” says Ceryl Evans, the director of the Capability Brown Festival.
“We know there are a lot of people who have never explored one, and would not think about doing so, which is why we challenged Brown sites to come up with ways to engage new audiences with their landscapes, tempting visitors to venture further into them, to explore and understand them. The venues have come up with some fantastic projects: dancing, geocaching [treasure hunts using GPS technology], making art, bug hunting, and countless other activities in Brown landscapes this year.”
Six pilot projects were launched in 2014 to explore different audience development techniques and reviewed to form the basis of the full HLF bid. They included a poetry slam at Croome in Worcestershire involving participants from inner-city Birmingham [see box] and a film-making project at Stowe in Buckinghamshire aimed at 14-25 year-olds from deprived communities nearby. The festival has now allocated funding to 21 audience development projects, with grants of between £500 and £5,000 awarded to cover costs ranging from historical interpreters and art materials to health and safety and volunteer expenses.
Chatsworth in Derbyshire is being funded by the festival to reach out to children in care, children with life-limiting medical conditions and refugees, with projects to encourage these groups to explore Brown’s work in the landscape. And Castle Ashby in Northamptonshire is running a series of events with Northamptonshire Gardens Trust linked to Black History Month, looking at the role of the transatlantic slave trade at the wealthy estates that Brown designed. Other sites are offering simple incentives to attract reluctant audiences, such as free entry to celebrate Brown’s birthday in August.
The festival is also tackling the issue of physical access to sites. With little or no public transport available at most, visiting Brown’s landscapes is a challenge to those without the use of a car.
Brown’s landscapes are thought of in the same way they tend to be photographed – pristine and empty"
Access all areas
This reliance on car travel also poses the question of environmental responsibility. Some of the properties involved have already put transport plans in place, but for those that haven’t the festival is appointing a sustainable transport adviser who will respond to the challenge of environmentally responsible travel.
At Compton Verney in Warwickshire, free transport by coach – the “Capability Brown Express” – will target hard-to-reach audiences from the local community, while other sites will be promoting cycling trails and tours, as at Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire. Tractor rides or horse-drawn carriages will make the wider parkland more accessible, as well as allowing visitors the opportunity to move through the landscape as Brown intended, and will appeal not just to those with restricted mobility but to people who lack the confidence to explore.
Exploration of the landscape is the focus for many family events, from orienteering to bioblitz bug surveys, with the emphasis on learning through discovery. History, geography, art, wildlife and conservation are all subjects easily accessible through Brown’s landscapes, and all rich material for engaging school groups. Stowe is introducing “Brown’s Boxes”, a themed resource for schools linked to the national curriculum, and urban schools in the West Midlands and Lancashire are being encouraged to visit Weston Park in Shropshire with the offer of a package that includes free transport, food, admission and activities.
Many of the events are volunteer-led, tapping into the expertise of County Gardens Trusts, NADFAS and other local groups. These partnerships are intended to boost community participation as well as foster opportunities for lifelong learning, benefits that will continue and expand well beyond the scope and timeframe of the festival.
With so many diverse events taking place across the country, the festival website forms the linchpin of the celebrations that were launched in 2014, with momentum gradually building towards this, the tercentenary year. The website includes details of all the events taking place and an interactive map of Brown-landscaped sites, as well as a regular blog. Further resources will be added as the festival progresses, including downloadable leaflet-maps and a specially commissioned animation on Brown’s life and work. This digital presence is extended with social media to reach a wider audience, although when funding ceases in early 2017 this will no longer be an active platform for promoting the festival legacy.
The branding is distinctive, with a logo designed and donated by Kolab (who also built the website) and a licence from Bridgeman Images to use a portrait of Brown from c.1770 by the artist Richard Cosway from a private collection, which has become the “face” of the festival. This branding is being made available to participating sites, and unites the disparate activities and venues of the festival, appearing locally, nationally and even internationally. VisitEngland is helpfully promoting the festival as part of its 2016 Year of the English Garden campaign.
Adding dimensions
Museums are already capitalising on the publicity generated by this year of festivities: Harrogate’s Mercer Art Gallery is staging the major exhibition Noble Prospects: Capability Brown and the Yorkshire Landscape (24 June–11 September), and many smaller museums are scheduling displays and exhibitions to tie in with the festival too. Most of the material available for display is two-dimensional, so curators face the challenge of creating visually appealing shows with maps, letters and bills.
Rather than focusing on historical interpretation, some museums are using Brown as the inspiration for contemporary art projects. Orleans House in Twickenham is staging Capability Now, an exhibition that includes modern interpretations of Brown’s ideas in a range of media, while Weston Park in Shropshire is planning a series of art exhibitions exploring Brown’s legacy, and the Embroiderers’ Guild is exhibiting a collection of work inspired by Brown’s landscapes at over 40 venues across the country.
The Granary Art Gallery in Shropshire is also hosting an exhibition about Brown. “This gives us the opportunity to reflect Brown’s legacy, but also to demonstrate the antithesis to his aesthetic,” says Gareth Williams, the curator and head of learning at the gallery.
The scale of the festival gives a wide enough scope to engage new audiences while, at the same time, encouraging traditional audiences to explore the subject in different ways. The many various events that are part of the festival will be encountered in some unexpected places, from cafes offering “Capabili-teas”, Brownies (inevitably), to church bells ringing non-stop to celebrate Brown’s baptism.
Other dispensations include a special category, “Capability Brown Today”, in the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition, a children’s playground with a serpentine-shaped sandpit inspired by Brown’s lakes, a piece of music composed in response to the landscape, site-specific art installations, dance performances, a sponsored bike ride, and a biodiversity conference on what Brown did for ecology.
“The Capability Brown Festival is of course celebrating Brown the man, but our main purpose is to nurture his enlightened thinking and ensure his landscapes are open to and interpreted for as wide a range of visitors as possible,” says Ceryl Evans. “This work will pay dividends this year but also long after the festival is over, ensuring Brown’s significant legacy continues to be acknowledged, and lives on.”
The success of the festival will be measured by what happens beyond the tercentenary, and whether enthusiastic new audiences continue to engage with the designed landscape.
Round and round the garden
In summer 2014, the National Trust invited the Birmingham creative youth engagement agency Beatfreeks to hold a poetry slam at Croome in Worcestershire, as a pilot audience development project for the Capability Brown Festival. With creative guidance from local poet Spoz, six poets aged 18-24 came to Croome to explore whether Brown was more “Visionary or Vandal”. None of them had been to Croome before – most had never visited a National Trust property. After exploring the landscape and researching Brown’s involvement in the site, the participants responded to it through poetry and music, culminating in a performance of their work. The audience then voted “Visionary” or “Vandal”, based on the arguments presented in the poetry – an innovative, engaging way of encouraging them to consider Brown’s impact on the landscape. Afterwards, a short video was posted on YouTube and the poems were published on the festival website.
Beatfreeks’ mission is “To enable brands and organisations to better understand, respect and engage young people. To empower young people to organise themselves with purpose by providing real life contexts where they are valued for their expertise and creative input.”
By bringing this pioneering social enterprise to the National Trust, the Capability Brown Festival is fulfilling its role in facilitating audience development at sites. Of the participants at the poetry slam, everyone enjoyed their time at Croome; importantly for the project’s legacy, all of them said they would now be more likely to visit a heritage property.
Rachel Sharpe, who worked on the project, says: “The Poetry Slam was a resounding success for us here at Croome, and we felt privileged to have had the opportunity to work with new talent on such an innovative project.” This year, Beatfreeks will be working on a similar project in the Brown landscape at Warwick Castle.