Artists across the county of Devon in SW England have been listening to the trees, and engaging children and communities of all ages in conversations with our natural landscape. The Devon satellite site is coordinated by Significant Seams CIC - an arts and wellbeing organisation. We believe our individual and collective wellbeing is intimately tied to how we live in harmony with our natural world. This ethos is reflected in artworks we help to make and across the work we do. We are highlighting arts-led exhibitions, public artworks, and events across Devon and encouraging our community to treat the selection like a hedgerow highway - a path to explore our county and communities. We welcome the conversations and new connections the biennale can help to instigate - with the trees and each other.

Four permanent installations anchor our programme.

In Winter '24-'25 artists Joe Webster and Catherine West engaged over 600 people from the Newton Abbot community of Devon in conversations about trees, collecting words and memories that Joe, and selected representatives of the community, 'graffiti-ed' as detail into a 16-story tree painting a short distance from the site of an ancient oak that was defended by locals before being cut down a century earlier.

In the same period, Catherine West co-created a textile tree and installation artwork with the community around Crediton Train Station in mid-Devon, bringing the outside into the Crediton Tea Rooms with a patchwork tree of all seasons that also serves to improve the acoustics and sensory experience of the Victorian era space. The space is now run by an arts organisation committed to equal access to music, art, stories, and life, the Turning Tides Project.

Paper sculptor James Lake has worked with communities across Devon in the creation of tree sculptures for libraries in North and West Devon.

A range of workshops, events, and exhibitions will form our wider Devon Satellite programme.