Eight artists have been commissioned to create new work for the Goonhilly Village Green 2 project, on the Lizard Peninsula.

Building on a successful pilot project in 2015, artists Sara Bowler and Elizabeth Masterton, with curatorial team Field Notes, will offer people the opportunity to discover the area through a range of activities; sharing stories and exploring ideas about art, science and nature.

The project has recently confirmed funding from Arts Council England, Heritage Lottery Fund, Cornwall Council’s FEAST fund, the Ernest Cook Trust and the Elmgrant Trust, enabling the GVG team to build on the successful Arts Council England funded Pilot in 2015.

Over the next six months, artists Paul Chaney, James Hankey, Sara Bowler, Beth Emily Richards and Rosanna Martin will be working with local partners Natural England, GES Ltd, Trelowarren Estate, The Museum of Cornish Life, and the Lizard Outreach Trust, with Oliver Raymond Barker, Phyllida Bluemel and Bram Thomas Arnold.

They will also produce new work for The Gathering, a free village fete style event on Saturday, May 18.

Lottery players’ support through Heritage Lottery Fund’s Sharing Heritage programme will also enable a free Community Programme of talks, workshops and events in the area from February to April 2019, with the first talk by GVG’s Sara Bowler, Robin Ridge from Goonhilly Heritage Society and a speaker from Natural England scheduled for February 5.

Heritage Lottery funding will also support a placement for an up and coming assistant producer to work alongside Field Notes, whilst support from the Ernest Cook Trust will enable Goonhilly School - a day of themed outdoor learning activities for local school children.

The project has been developed over 10 years by Bowler and Masterton as an investigation of this distinctive site, based on the idea of assembly and commons.

Goonhilly Village Green offers people the opportunity to discover the site through a range of activities; sharing stories and exploring ideas about art, science and nature inspired by Goonhilly.

Elizabeth Masterton explains: “Goonhilly has always been a place of experiments. It has many stories: of telecommunications, archaeology, ecology, geology, social history, agriculture and astronomy, amongst others.”

Sara Bowler adds: “Through a Creative Exchange residency at Exeter University’s Environment and Sustainability Institute in 2014, we learnt about cutting edge experiments on Goonhilly.

"Goonhilly Village Greens aims to assemble a body of accessible knowledge drawn from academic, vernacular and experiential sources.”

“This felt like a really local event, attended by people from the local community who appreciated Goonhilly and its heaths and history, who loved the imaginative and artistic Cornish cultural scene, and wanted to be part of it.” Amanda Scott, Western Morning News 2015.

By drawing on this resource, Goonhilly Village Green aims to create a platform to a wide and varied audience, instigating a new approach to the traditional subjects of landscape and history within contemporary practice.

Goonhilly Downs' standing stone Dry Tree Menhir marks the convergence of five parish boundaries, but as those who live locally know, Goonhilly itself has no central village.

Most of Goonhilly’s residents live around the edge of the Downs, with visitors who come to work or explore.

The aim of Goonhilly Village Green is to draw together this diverse range of people and interests to meet, talk, learn and play on a temporary village green on the Downs; to find common ground on the common land of National Nature Reserve.

A full programme of events will be posted on our website and through social media. http://www.goonhillyvillagegreen.org