Crepuscular Creatures is the culmination of ten month’s work by a group of year twelve students from Kingsbridge Community College. Vitalina Bilous, Martha Freeston, Matilda Harris, and Emily Hoar worked with Harbour House over this time as part of their sixth form enrichment programme, exploring how art can engage with the community and the world around them. The subsequent moving image work celebrates the diversity of local nature which is active at dawn and dusk: species which are known as ‘crepuscular’.

They worked with a local sound artist, Jodie Saunders, to create field recordings of local nature spots, and of animals and birds at local sanctuaries. They used these, and recordings from the BBC Natural History Collection Unit sound archives, to create a soundscape for the moving image piece which can be seen in our screening room at the back of the gallery. The images come from local trail cam footage, some of which the young people sourced, and some which Kingsbridge Natural History Society members generously shared with the group. The young people worked with local artist Oliver Sutherland to edit the footage together.

The group ran several community workshops to further explore the project’s themes. They ran ‘nature foley sound’ workshops at Kingsbridge Community Primary School; making bird and animal sounds using instruments and everyday objects, and creating drawings inspired by this. The resulting drawings can be seen in the first gallery

The group also worked with other Kingsbridge Community College students to make ‘wishing leaves’; exploring young people’s hopes for the natural world in the face of the climate crisis. Some of the wishes were used as text in the film. The leaf prints can be seen in the first gallery, alongside images from photographer Robert Darch, documenting Ash Dieback in Devon. This was commissioned by Devon Wildlife Trust and Beaford Arts as part of the ‘Saving Devon’s Treescapes’ project.

The young people also collaborated with Kingsbridge Natural History Society members to create a ‘sound scavenger map’; a free interactive activity which encourages community members to get out into Kingsbridge and to listen to its abundance of nature sounds. The map is illustrated by local artist Mikayla Shuker. The map is free for all, and available from the gallery.