Talking Tent | Sarah Acton

Dorset National Landscape 60th anniversary and onwards! This project has been a big and important part of my life in recent years, and as it continues, opens new possibilities of how we can go deeper into listening, seasonal connections and nature place relationships.

Talking Tent

The Talking Tent is hosted by myself as poet/ writer/event host and performer co-hosting with Dorset storyteller Martin Maudsley and members of the team. It was loosely inspired by Radio 4’s The Listening Project, celebrating the landscape in the area through the joy and flow of voices in-conversation and how they can reveal so much about what we value and how we story and soundtrack places with our own personal and inherited communal memories and stories, myths. The informal chats also inspire other conversations when shared, it helps to hear such a variety of different voices and ways of looking at things.

We have been lucky enough to take the Talking Tent to two Inside Out festivals run by Activate Performing Arts in 2021 and 2023 – sharing conversations, ideas and memories of the Dorset seasons and places we love in the Dorset National Landscape.

This large scale project has given me so much in terms of learning and developing ways to work with audiences through storytelling techniques, collaborative joy in learning and co-creating, and has fuelled my passion for using oral history in creative practice and undertaking in-depth research, listening to place, using audio and field recordings.

With thanks to Tom, Sue, Kate, Caroline, Jules Steph…and all Dorset National Landscape team for their creative vision, expertise and trust.