Stone Club Walks and Talks

Today our guest is Einar Selvik, musician, singer and ethnomusicologist. Einar if the founder of the band Wardruna. We talk about ancient sites, nature, wild places, landscape and Einar's life growing up in Norway. We talk about music, poetry, archaeology, playing drums in metal bands and the beginnings and evolution of Wardruna up to the present day. We also discuss Wardruna's new album Birna. From the deep woods now emerges Birna, Wardruna's sixth studio album. Through his restless dialogue with nature, main composer Einar Selvik has been searching for the voice of the bear, resulting in this upcoming release, scheduled for January 2025. Birna – the she-bear in Old Norse – is a work of art dedicated to the guardian of the forest, nature's caretaker, and her battles here on earth. Slowly driven out of her habitat by modern day societies, she has entered a stage of permanent hibernation. As a result, the forest is gradually dying, longing for its pulse and heart – its shepherd. Birna calls for her return.

Today we talk with Hayden Thorpe about Orford Ness, about the power of place, about, nature, rewilding and the creation of Hayden's new lp Ness. Hayden Thorpe is the Cumbrian solo artist, formerly of Wild Beasts.  Using a process of redaction, Thorpe brings songs to life from the pages of best-selling author Robert Macfarlane's book of the same name. Ness is inspired by Suffolk's Orford Ness, the former Ministry of Defence weapons development site during both World Wars and the Cold War. Acquired by the National Trust in 1993 and left to re-wild, it to this day remains a place of paradox, mystery and constant evolution.

Today we talk with authors and activists Amy-Jane Beer and Lewis Winks on behalf of Right to Roam. We talk about a new report published today that is all about inaccesible ancient sites. We discuss access islands and the imortance of being able to walk freely in the coutryside. We discuss the Right to Roam movement, why it is important and how people can get involved. We talk about access to nature and the health benefits of being in nature, becoming closer to nature and being nature! "Right to Roam" is a colloquial way of describing an ancient custom that gives anyone the freedom to wander in open countryside, whether the land is privately or publicly owned. In countries such as Norway, Sweden, Estonia and Scotland it has long existed as a common right, a defining concept of nationhood, and has only recently been codified into law.

In today's episode we talk with aritst and writer Jackie Morris & stained glass artist Tamsin Abbott. We discuss Jackie and Tamsin's forthcoming book Wild Folk: Tales from the Stones. We discuss the ancient sites and tales that make up the book as well as the process of how the book was created. We talk about art, imagination and nature and discuss some of the authors that have influenced Jackie and Tamsin. WILD FOLK is a beautifully illustrated sequence of seven tales, marking the first book length collaboration between the storyteller artists, Tamsin Abbott and Jackie Morris. Each of the seven tales are fables of transformation and power, summoned from the ancient stones beneath our feet and transformed by word and image into portals between past and future. The tales are neither new nor old. They are full of ‘wild folk', shape-shifting spirits that carry the energy that connects all things.

Today we feature Lally MacBeth, founder of The Folk Archive and Stone Club co-founder. We chat about The Folk Archive, Lally's Magazine The Folk Review and also about The Lost Folk, Lally's forthcoming debut book which is due to be published by Faber in June 2025. We discuss folk customs, folk music Krampus and a very large snowman. Lally MacBeth is an artist, writer & curator based in Cornwall, England. Lally graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2013 with a First Class Honours in Fashion History & Theory, and has since divided her time between being sensible and silly. Her work wanders the line between the real and the imaginary, taking in history, folklore, performance, ritual, and artifice along the way. She is interested in the links between high and low cultural artefacts and how these lines are often blurred in archives.

In this episode we talk with artist Alex Hartley about his latest artwork The Summoning Stones which features in the exhibition Dartmoor: A Radical Landscape at RAMM. We talk about Alex's practice with sculpture and photography. About walks on Dartmoor, the energy of ancient standing stones and the transfer of energy with modern technology. We discuss access to nature and climate change and Alex's artistic influences. Alex Hartley is an artist whose work destabilises ideas of both iconic architecture and nature by exploring our understanding of utopian ideologies. Extending into ambitious works of land art, employing his practice to test our notions of utopia, the individual, and the critical relationship we have with the environment that questions how we occupy the world's wild places.

In this episode we talk with archaeologist Dr Jennifer Wexler about Stonehenge, Grime's Graves, Thronborough Henges and ancient Cornish sites as well as discussing Jennifer's journey in archaeology and in curating exhibitions. Including work in Sicily and the USA. Jennifer works as a prehistorian for English Heritage and is the former Project curator of The World of Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum. She specializes in archaeological landscapes, and the prehistoric and ancient archaeology of the Mediterranean and Western Europe.

We talk with Folk singer and activist Sam Lee about Songdreaming, about Folk songs, about nature and access to nature, about singing at Stonehenge and ancient sites. We talk about Pilgrimage, Wild Service and the Right to Roam movement. Sam Lee plays a unique role in the British music scene. A Mercury prize nominated singer, highly inventive and original arranger, folksong interpreter, passionate conservationist, song collector and creator of live events. Sam's work as an artist has shaken up the music scene breaking boundaries between traditional and contemporary music and the assumed places and ways folksong is appreciated.

In today's episode we talk with Philip Carr-Gomm. We chat about ancient sites, sacred spaces and nature. We talk about initiation, The Order of Bards Ovates and Druids⁠, Alfred Watkins and Ley lines. As a very special extra feature Philip leads us on a Stone Club meditation. Philip Carr-Gomm is a writer and psychologist and the former Chief of OBOD. His online school, the Art of Living Well offers courses in sophrology, sleeping well, the Tarot and magical creativity.

In this episode we talk with Amy Grantham about her artistic practice, about developing work and ideas in relation to health. We talk about folklore, folk culture and community, about music and about the stones and sites that connect us. Amy is a self-taught artist and photographer who lives and works in New York City. 

In this episode we talk with author Oliver Smith. We discuss ancient sites and modern pilgrimage. We talk about some of the folks that Oliver met and revisit some of the places that Oliver travelled to while writing On This Holy Island. Take a trip with us across the isle of Albion into ancient and modern spaces. Oliver Smith is an acclaimed travel writer working mostly for the Financial Times, The Times and Outside Magazine in the USA. For 10 years he worked for Lonely Planet Magazine. During his time there he won Travel Writer of the Year at the Travel Media Awards, was AITO Travel Writer of the Year on three occasions, and was nominated for PPA Writer of the Year. On This Holy Island is his first book with Bloomsbury Continuum.

In this episode we talk with Angeline Morrison about her new album Orphelia and about ancient sites in Cornwall. We discuss Angenine's previous solo lp The Sorrow Songs and some of the stories that make up that lp as well as her contribution and collaborations with We Are Muffy and the album Grace Will Lead Me Home with Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne & Jon Bickley. Recently hailed as one of MOJO's 'voices taking folk into the future', Angeline Morrison is a singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter whose work combines a deep love of traditional song, a deep respect for the hidden ancestral voices of Old Albion, and a strong belief in magic and enchantment as powerful charms for decoloniality.  Angeline mostly makes music in the genres of wyrd folk and psych folk.  Her songs have a feral approach, a handmade sonic aesthetic (found sounds, homemade instruments) and a belief in the importance of tenderness. 

Today we talk with Sam K. Horton about his debut novel Gorse. we also talk about ancient sites, standing stones, the Cornish landspape, about folklore and myth and about the process of writing and creating new worlds. An author of literary fantasy, Sam lives above the moor in North Cornwall, and draws on its wild landscape, wide skies, and windblown folklore for his work. Growing up on a sheep farm near Hereford, he left for London and trained as a costume designer working in film, theatre and opera before moving into visual art, still working with narratives, texts and stories. It was during his last project, surrounding the discovery and development of Eythin (an island lost off the coast of Cornwall, halfway between Boscastle and the Celtic Deep) that he found his talent for writing rich, detailed mythic worlds. This came as a surprise—despite a lifelong love of reading anything within reach, and over a decade working in libraries—but a welcome one.

Today we talk with songwriter musician and singer Katy J Pearson. We talk about Katy's new album Someday, Now, her remaking of The Wicker Man soundtrack, of finding places of historic interest while on the road as well as Katy's favourite artists and new music to keep an eye on. May the wind be always at your back chants Katy J Pearson over the opening seconds of her third solo record. Though lifted from the age-old Celtic Blessing, it is also disjoined, glitchy; transformed into a murky, modern good-luck charm for an electronic advent. Indicative of a shift in heart and sound, it fires the starting pistol for an album on which Pearson refuses to kick her heels; running red lights, resisting retrogrades, and exercising her own autonomy — in life, in love, and in the recording studio.

Ruth Allen is an author, pyschotherapist and geologist. We talk to Ruth about her phenomenal book 'Weathering', about stones, about climate change, thresholds, healing and journeys through life. Ruth lives and works on the edge of the Peak District, Derbyshire, Ruth believes that we all have an ‘ecological self' that longs to be better connected to the natural world than many of us feel day-to-day Hosted by Stone Club co-founder Matthew Shaw

Today are guests are Slomo. A band made up of members Chris (“Holy”) McGrail who recently contributed to Julian Cope's Dope and Queen Elizabeth projects and Howard Marsden who co-runs Hebden Bridge's already-legendary Ambient Bowling Club, where experimental music mixes with environmental sounds, low chatter and the soft clank of bowls. We discuss ancient sites around the UK, The Modern Antiquarian and Slomo's musc to date including their fifth album in 20 years, “Zen and Zennor”; their sonic palette refreshed, their focus again tuned to the spectral otherness of Land's End. The cover star – Zennor Quoit – is a colossal megalithic structure to be found on moorland above the village of Zennor, 4.5 miles to the west of St Ives.

Our guest today is artist and archaeologist Dr Ffion Reynolds. Join Ffion and Stone Club's Matthew Shaw as they discuss Archaeology, the arts, community and the mysterious world and connections of mycelium networks and their mushrooms! Dr Ffion Reynolds was born in Cardiff, Wales, UK. She trained as an archaeologist at Cardiff University, completing her PhD at the university, focusing on the rock art of the Neolithic passage tombs of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth in Co. Meath, Ireland, and then broadening her research interests to include the subject of worldview; studying shamanism, totemism and animism. Currently, she co-directs a public archaeology excavation in the multi-period landscape around the important site of Bryn Celli Ddu Neolithic passage tomb, on the island of Anglesey. Bryn Celli Ddu (The Mound in the Dark Grove), is a significant Neolithic passage tomb in north-west Wales, and sits in a landscape of rock art. Over the course of the project which started in 2015, 12 new rock art panels have been discovered and recorded using digital archaeology techniques.

In this episode we meet with visionary artist John Abell to talk landscape, mountains, ancient site, radical printmaking, changemaking and fine art. We also talk a folkloric trip to some spots along the Antrim coast with Feargal Lynn, there are ghosts, rock formations, impossible buildings and shipwrecks. Hosted by Matthew Shaw.

Today we walk and talk with film director Chriatopher Morris in West Penwith, Cornwall. We visit Boscawen Ros East Menhir, Tregiffian Burial Chamber and The Merry Maidens Stone Circle before returning to Christopher's house to continue our conversation out of the wind. Joining us for this episode are film producer Denzil Monk, Stone Club co-founder Lally MacBeth and fine artist Sarah Ball. Christoper and Denzil are the team behind the film A Year in a Field the story of one Cornish field told over one climatic year. Winter Solstice 2020: with his camera and tripod, BAFTA winning documentary filmmaker Christopher Morris began filming each day in a field near his home. “I've never glued my hand to a road, or strapped myself to a tree and I've never been on a climate protest march but once in a lifetime natural disasters are happening more than once in my lifetime and I've got to do something...” A quiet, unnoticed, one-man vigil, a direct-action of stillness. He stopped filming on Winter Solstice 2021: a year that UN Secretary-General António Guterres, said was “make or break” for humanity to confront the climate crisis. “I struggle to comprehend what I am being told.” A Year In A Field is not made by a climate scientist. It is a local, lo-fi, low-impact film - in contrast to the overblown, blue-chip, carbon-generating film productions that fly the globe in pursuit of unfamiliar wonders to address the climate emergency through tech-driven cinematic dazzle - more akin to science fiction. Presented by Matthew Shaw

This time our guest is Annebella Pollen and our subject is The Kindrend of the Kibbo Kift. Annebella Pollen is the author of The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians as well as Professor of Visual and Material Culture at University of Brighton. Annebella's research areas include mass photography and the popular image, and histories of art, craft, design and dress, especially marginal, alternative and non-canonical forms. The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians is the first full-length work to explore the innovative cultural production of the English camping and hiking organization (1920-1932). Founded after the First World War as a reaction to militarism in scouting, Kibbo Kift developed into an all-ages organization for men and women. It attracted the support of a range of high-profile writers, artists, scientists and campaigners from DH Lawrence to HG Wells. Underpinned by a complex, distinctive philosophy, Kibbo Kift's practices were wide-ranging, extending across health and handicraft, pacifism and propaganda, myth and magic, education and economics. If you enjoy this episode please subscribe and share. Thank you for listening. Presented by Matthew Shaw

Join us on a walk along the Antrim Coast as we visit three ancient sites with Michael Bates & Louise Parker, we find Ossians Grave, the hidden village and The Holestone at Doagh. We also talk wit Angela Samata about her work in the arts and health and her current obsesssions with the sites on Anglesey and how stone circles can disolve time. Presented by Matthew Shaw

Join us on a trip to The Scilly Isles for a walk with artist Teän Roberts as we visit tombs, walk the coastline and discover ancient villages. We also chat with peace activist, campaigner and author Satish Kumar to talk about epic transatlantic walks, education, peace, love, hope and activism. You can find more about Teän's work here & Satish & Resurgence here Presented by Matthew Shaw