To go to school in a summer morn - O it drives all joy away!
The following photos, interspersed with excerpts from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, document a collaborative artwork facilitated by myself and created by children on the River Dart, Devon, England on Sept 6th 2018 as part of STREAM arts festival. The piece began with the children running 50ft of Super 8mm film along the bank of the river, then watercolouring onto its surface, before carrying it up to the graveyard at Dartington Hall and hanging it around a yew tree to dry - that same evening the film was projected at the festival.
'But to go to school in a summer morn,
O it drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.'
'And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.'
'So sung a little clod of clay,
Trodden with the cattle’s feet,
But a pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet'
'Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sunflower wishes to go!'
Earth raised up her head
From the darkness dread and drear,
Her light fled,
Stony, dread,
And her locks covered with grey despair.