Civic agriculture explores where formal institution meets Swaledale sheep-farming.
Ravenseat College is built from 26 miles of redundant drystone.
A drystone tower celebrates wool as a sustainable construction material.
Hay, wool and stone are utilised as renewable construction materials.
Agricultural by-products overlap with the educational programme.
Drystones sophistication and limitations are embraced, celebrating the agricultural landscape.
CIVIC AGRICULTURE AT RAVENSEAT COLLEGE
by Kelsie Cummins
Swaledale farmers are challenged post-Brexit, with a shift from profitable sheep-farming to environmental stewardship schemes. This change in subsidies will visually-threaten the quintessential, agricultural landscape of the Yorkshire Dales and make redundant 5000 miles of dry-stone walls. The key economic and social challenges farmers may face are addressed by creating a resilient agricultural economy and processing the inevitable wool produced from the sites 1000 sheep, into a high value material. Ravenseat College defines and explores the term ‘civic agriculture’ with a low-carbon objective, which reimagines hyper-local resources materialised from sheep farming: 26 miles of drystone wall, hay and the sheep themselves.
