The Landscape Rehearsals

An exhibitions opening the debate on place-based food production systems for a changing climate.

The Landscape Rehearsals explores indigenous ways of knowing and managing the land – opening the debate on place-based food production systems for a changing climate.

A large drawing in the exhibition depicts clachán settlements and roinn dáil – an indigenous landscape management practice found in the Pre-Famine landscapes of the west of Ireland.

Further explored in this exhibition – through video – are today’s landscapes of Nigeria’s Ogun State, which offer parallels to roinn dáil. In Ijebu Itele and Ijebu Ife in Nigeria, we explore the landscape management practices of iroro and makiyaya of farmers and pastoralists, respectively. This exploration represents a discursive collaboration which can be heard in the exhibition between indigenous expert farmers and pastoralists, and contributors from the fields of landscape architecture, law, sociology, landscape history, economics and policy. Across each of these unique and place-based forms of indigenous landscape management, ecology forms an essential component to human life – offering lessons for the future of agriculture on a warming planet.