New Forest-Inspired Artworks Unveiled at the Dean Heritage Centre
New Artistic Installations Celebrate the Voices and Landscape of the Forest at the Dean Heritage Centre
A series of captivating new installations by artist-in-residence John Slater are now on display at the Dean Heritage Centre, celebrating the words, memories, and landscapes of the Forest of Dean. Developed since his residency began in April, these thought-provoking works bring together literature, history, and visual art to honour the spirit of the Forest community.
Slater’s latest creations take inspiration from the Forest of Dean Writers’ Collection, as well as stories shared by locals, exploring how creative expression captures memory and place.
The main installation, Forest, features texts by Winifred Foley, Leonard Clark, F.W. Harvey, and Joyce Latham suspended from branches before Slater’s paintings and drawings. Visitors can hear recordings of the writers reading their own work, alongside Keith Morgan’s Forest dialect poem Varest Ship.
In Gallery One, The Grandfather Clock of Times Past, Present and Future—commissioned by the Green Pledge Project—invites visitors to add their own memories, poems, and hopes for the future to a clock filled with community contributions. Its exterior is decorated with drawings from the Findall Iron Mine chimney, surrounded by the forest.
Gallery Three houses Elvers, inspired by F.W. Harvey’s poem, where curved Perspex panels hand-painted with the text evoke the movement of swimming elvers. Visitors can interactively ‘catch’ words from the poem to create their own verses among traditional fishing nets from the collection.
Outdoors, near the millshed, stands The Charcoal Dragon—a sculptural piece built from local wood in a charcoal cradle for Cannop Wood Distillery, inspired by Leonard Clark’s Charcoal Burners.
These installations have been supported by an Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant.
Explore Gloucestershire
12 November 2025
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