Application: Rivers and Moorland Festival Small Project Fund

My name is Matt Marshall and I am a photographer based in Plymouth who predominantly works on Dartmoor.

My work to date (my Dystopia project) has used Dartmoor as a landscape to present feelings of melancholy, isolation, and persistence through black and white photography. During this project I ventured onto the North Moor around Okehampton where I discovered evidence of military presence scattered around the landscape. This has provided the inspiration for my proposal for the festival, which is a much more focused commentary on the Willsworthy Firing Range. Dartmoor’s landscape has been heavily influenced by the needs of the military over the decades, so much so that it has been altered to accommodate training exercises. The firing range serves the purpose of live firing and I want to focus on the impact this has had to the area’s natural aesthetic being tampered with by human intervention through colour photography.

I hope that this project will bring to the forefront conversations about the necessity of the military’s presence on Dartmoor in relation to environmental and ethical concerns in today’s world. The historical use of the area is documented back to the early 1900s when the land was purchased by The War Office but back then times were very different. Can a militarised area co-exist in a National Park that is open to the public or is it inevitable that changes need to be made to accommodate modern concerns? The area is indeed open to the public so bringing a perspective of the area through photography to a wide audience that extends beyond those engaging with the Rivers and Moorland Festival is a key objective of the project to challenge notions of military training and land use.

The beauty of responding through photography is the flexibility the project has for future development and presentation. In such a tight timescale an online presentation makes sense, however there are many ways this can be adapted to make it more accessible. As previously mentioned, Willsworthy Firing Range is open to the public when live firing isn’t occurring so there is scope for site visits and walks to take place. With prior research of key points of interest in the area, the walks can take the form of historical education and/or photographic sessions to engage other creatives.

From my other personal project The Observation Posts of Dartmoor I have found mapping and grid referencing to be helpful from a personal perspective for reference points but this also provides an accessibility opportunity for others who may want to explore the area in their own time. As a person who identifies with having a mental health disorder I sometimes find that I like to act alone in discovery and exploration to take the time to process things on my own. Accurate co-ordinates are readily available via the MOD and making them publicly available by accompanying them with my work gives people this option.

The project will be launched as an online exhibition via my website on the weekend of the festival. However, the work itself will take place in advance to the festival through a series of trips to the Firing Range. I’m keen to explore the surrounding area as well as the range itself because there are many tors that people can expand their exploration into if they are walking the area themselves, therefore I want to provide comprehensive information to be presented with the work to encourage people to expand their curiosity beyond the main site and further into Dartmoor.

The fund will be spent on travel costs to get to and from the location, as well as editing software for a smoother, more effective post-production workflow. Some of the funds will be used on social media boosting to bring the project to a wider audience and I also want to allocate a small amount to testing paper types for a small booklet/leaflet publication that will be presented beyond the festival. I am keen to continue developing this project and bringing it to print but I am hesitant to use print on demand services due to the environmental impact companies like Vistaprint have.