Harriet Fraser

Biography

I am a Visiting Research Fellow at the university, here in my capacity as a writer, poet and artist with a specific interest in the nature and culture of place. I have worked as a freelance writer for over twenty years, and for the last ten years I’ve been working in collaboration with Rob Fraser through our art and research practice, somewhere nowhere. Our work crosses disciplines and aims to shed light on the seldom-seen and seldom-heard, bringing ideas and opinions together in the context of rural landscapes. We aim to include multiple perspectives from different communities, including other than human, and have worked with partners including National Park authorities, National Trust, Woodland Trust, Foundation for Common Land, Farmer Network and Natural England. We share work through interactive creative events including curated walks, and through exhibitions, books, films and presentations.

With Rob Fraser I have founded the PLACE Collective: a community of artists engaged with issues of nature, environment and rural landscapes and a network for knowledge-sharing, research and collaboration. It is inspired by a recognition of the critical need for more sustainable ways of living and the value of art in conversations, research and action and aims to create links between artists, rural communities, academics, and organisations charged with caring for landscapes. 

My journey to this point has been anything but linear: I’ve spent time travel writing (several years in India as a writer for Rough Guides); working with medical professionals focusing on women’s health and emotional intelligence in families; and using art and poetry in community work with the Wordsworth Trust and Lakeland Arts in Cumbria. Writing has always featured as a creative driver alongside a deep-seated need to be in touch with the natural world; both are at the heart of my projects and active research, and are always part of participatory projects with others that reduce the sense of humans being ‘other’ than nature, and encourage conversations and openness to the possibility of change.

Co-founder: The PLACE Collective (https://theplacecollective.org/) at the Centre for National parks and Protected Areas 

Projects over the last ten years include:

Ensemble: Digitally Inspired Integrated Environmental Science - Artist in Residence (Lancaster University/EPSRC) (2017 - 2021) https://www.ensembleprojects.org/

Sense of Here: The Feeling and Knowing of Place (2019-2021) https://www.somewhere-nowhere.com/projects/sense-of-here

Our Common Cause, Our Upland Commons: Social Cohesion in the Uplands (2018-2019) https://www.somewhere-nowhere.com/projects/our-common-cause

Archive of Lost Woods (2019) https://www.somewhere-nowhere.com/projects/archive-of-lost-woods

The Long View: Two Years with Remarkably Ordinary Trees (2015-2017) https://www.somewhere-nowhere.com/projects/the-long-view

Voices from the Land: Farming & Heritage in the Yorkshire Dales (2016-2017) https://www.somewhere-nowhere.com/projects/voices-from-the-land

Land Keepers: Lake District Hill Farming (2012-2014) https://www.somewhere-nowhere.com/projects/landkeepers

Qualifications and memberships

MPhil (Interdisciplinary Studies), University of Glasgow: Open Fell Poetics: Investigating the Lake District as a ‘Cultural Landscape’ through practice-based poetics. (2017)

Fellow, Royal Geographical Society

Fellow, Royal Society of the Arts

Trustee, Foundation for Common Land

Patron, Friends of the Lake District

Research Associate, Art.dot.earth

Academic and research interests

• Issues connected with natural and cultural heritage, particularly in protected or fragile landscapes
• The use of art in environmental research and communication
• Experimental poetry involving landscape in creation and expression

Publications

Academic Journals & Publications

Co-author: The Role of Digital Technologies in Responding to the Grand Challenges of the Natural Environment: The Windermere Accord , 2020   https://www.cell.com/patterns/pdf/S2666-3899%2820%2930204-X.pdf  DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2020.100156 

Contributor: Valuing Arts and Arts Research  Saratsi, E., Acott, T., Allinson, E., Edwards, D., Fremantle, C., Fish, R. 2019, Valuing Arts and Arts Research.  Valuing Nature Paper VNP22.  2019 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337243366_Valuing_Arts_Arts_Research

Fraser, Harriet and Fraser, Rob: “Poetics of Place – Inviting landscape to become part of the poetry” Performance Research Journal of Performing Arts, Vol 24 (2), 2019 https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2019.1624468

Fraser, Harriet. Postscript ‘Hidden Voices of Landscape.” Ethnography 2016, Vol 17(3) 411-415 https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138115609375

Fraser, Harriet, and Rob Fraser. "What Rises Above the White Noise: the Possibility of Hearing Truth in a Post-truth World." The Goose, vol. 16 , no. 1 , article 28, 2017.   https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol16/iss1/28

Fraser, Harriet. "The Yellow Line: Whose View Is It Anyway?." The Goose, vol. 15 , no. 1, article 44, 2016 https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/44

External Publications

Poems in anthologies including:

Treelines (Worple Press, Tonbridge, 2017)

This Place I know (Handstand Press, Sedbergh, 2018)

Write to Be Counted (The Book Mill, Appleby, 2018)

Curlew Calling Anthology (Numenius Press, 2018)

Treeline (Lautus Press, Lechlade, 2018)

Articles published in: The Telegraph Magazine, Adventure Travel, Geographical Magazine, Dark Mountain, The Ecologist

Featured in: The Guardian, Cumbria Life, Cumbria Magazine

Shortlisted, Bridport Poetry Prize, 2018

Books published through somewhere nowhere press:

The Long View (2017)

Voices from the Land (2017)

Meadow (2016)

Land Keepers (2014)

Conference Presentations and Performances

2020   Envecon, UK Environmental Economists Annual Conference

2019   International Perspectives, Principia University, Illinois (USA)

2019   What is Natural? Wordsworth Grasmere

2018   Kendal Mountain Festival panellist, Kendal

2018   Words by the Water, Literary Festival, Keswick

2017   The Long View: behind the scenes, RGS Lecture Series, Kendal

2017   Art and the environment, Art XL, Sheffield University

2017   UK Tree Charter Launch, Lincoln

2016   Stories of the land  Artists, Farmers & Philosophers Symposium, Bowes

2016   Whose View is it Anyway?, Eden Arts, Cumbria

2016   Canopy, Woodland Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon

2016   Land Keepers, Tate Britain, London

Exhibitions of poetry, prose and visual art

2020    Sense of Here, Grizedale Forest

2019    Haiku in the Trees, Timber Festival, National Forest

2018    The Long View, Great North Museum, Newcastle; The North Wall, Oxford; ONCA, Brighton

2018    Exhibitor with Common Ground, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (May – Oct)

2017    Voices From the Land, Dales Countryside Museum, Hawes, Yorkshire + 3 touring venues

2017    C-Art, Art in Extraordinary Places: treefolds, Cumbria

2017    The Long View, Grizedale Forest, Cumbria (June – Oct)

2016    Environmental Internet of Things, Royal Welsh Show

2014    Land Keepers, Wordsworth Museum, Grasmere; Low Sizergh Barn, Kendal; Wray Castle, Ambleside; Theatre by The Lake, Keswick; Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), London.

Websites

somewhere-nowhere.com

theplacecollective.org

View staff directory