It's a cold morning in January and for once I'm writing from my home in Malvern. The scene is a bit different from the cabin but there's still a woodburner roaring to my right and I am cradling both a hot water bottle and a mammoth mug of coffee. 

I'm gearing up for my next exhibition of Where the Red Kite Flies and this one is in Sheffield, in the Geography Department of the University. I have really loved how varied and geographically far apart each of my exhibition spaces have been for this project, potentially leading to having a wider audience see the project but I also like that it stops me from thinking that galleries are the main place I should try to show my work. Which I do know, but it's that ugly ego thing that rears its head every so often.

One of the things I have enjoyed most about planning the exhibition in Sheffield is being back in touch with Jenny Pickerill who works at the University and has helped to organise the exhibition.I first met her back in 2010 when I went to photograph her in her self-built eco home in Leicestershire. At this point I was aware of my interest in self sufficiency and alternative lifestyles but I wasn't quite sure how to turn it into a project that would really sustain me. It was Jenny that first mentioned the Lammas eco village as a potential place for me to photograph and in doing so changed the trajectory of my life. Soon after meeting her I got in touch with Tao at the eco village and arranged my first visit. I often think of that John Hannah and Gwyneth Paltrow film 'Sliding Doors' and how these seemingly small encounters you can have with people can change your life so greatly. 

When I met up with Jenny in August of last year to start discussing the exhibition we also had the chance to catch up on what our lives had looked like over the last 14 years. She admitted that at one point she worried about what introducing me to the eco village had done to my life: when we'd met I had been with Duncan living in a normal house in Leicestershire and then the next thing she knows is that I've moved next to the eco village and into a static caravan! After a good laugh I assured her that everything had most certainly worked out for the best. There were times living in the caravan that perhaps weren't the easiest and would have given my parents cause for concern, such as cold nights meaning the water freezing in the pipes overnight and the olive oil on the counter turning into a solid block. There were also the frequent visits from snails and slugs. But if nothing else it was character building, I learnt to become a bit more self sufficient and there is nowhere that means more to me than that community. 

I love the feeling of coming full circle by exhibiting my second project about the eco village with the person who first introduced me to it. Which leads me to feel that the project is coming to a natural close. Wow, even typing that feels like too final. I'm not good with endings. So perhaps I'll think of this as a hiatus and just see where time takes me.

Which brings me to my next thing which is to say that this will be my final 'Where the Red Kite Flies' blog post and that from next month there's going to be a new blog which I'm moving over to Substack titled 'A Fallow Year'. 

As we neared the end of 2023 the idea of labelling 2024 as 'A Fallow Year’ started to grow in my mind and fill me with a deep desire for different kind of year and a change of pace. I'd loved the word 'Fallow' since my friends in Wales, Tom and Jacqui, first introduced me to it and explained how the term is used for  when you give a field a year of rest and time to regenerate. Well, this sounds simply wonderful and the idea of me having a fallow year fills me with visions of lounging about, reading stacks of books, wearing big fluffy socks, drinking copious amounts of coffee and lighting candles. 

Oh that just sounds ridiculously frivolous doesn’t it. 

Clearly I can't actually take a year off, wandering around the house clutching a hot water bottle with my head buried in a murder mystery novel. As tempting a vision as that is, I don't actually want to (well, I kind of do but I know that it would get boring quite quickly). I'm lucky enough to adore my job and get a great sense of  fulfilment from it. And obviously an income. I need to eat. And there's the coffee addiction to feed. But possibly having four exhibitions last year whilst also trying to balance my commercial/paid work ended up leaving me feel a bit burnt out by the end of the year. Forget multi-tasking, I want to learn to single task.

I also need to learn to rest better because my rest time hasn't actually been refuelling me. My first port of call for this is to greatly reduce my screen time.  Additionally, I see the idea of having a fallow year as giving myself an opportunity and the permission to play and make more time for fun. 

Typing 'A Fallow Year' into the google search box mostly gives me results about Glastonbury and resting the fields there but a little further down there is a link to a short article by Sheridan Voysey titled 'Do you need a 'Fallow Year'? The Ancient Art of a year of Rest' along with a link to BBC Pause for Thought segment he'd recorded. While the article has a religious undertone that isn’t quite my thing, there is some lovely thoughts, such as this, that I can relate to: 

‘I wonder then what would happen if we incorporated a fallow year into our lives the way farmers do in their farming. A year to replenish our energies and prepare for the next season. A year to rejuvenate and renew.’

Before this blog I hadn’t done any regular writing since my ‘Writer’s Craft’ class in my alternative high school. I’ve still got a lot of my typed and printed short stories from this time. Some of the writing is actually rather good and I find it hard to believe that this younger version of myself was actually so astute an observer of humans. Then there are pieces that are so clearly autobiographical about my teenage relationships that are rather cringy and I’m almost impressed that I had the gall to hand them in as assignments. Surprisingly, my teacher actually seemed to like them. A piece titled ‘Starbucks’ about a couple arguing in a coffee shop scored me an A-. 

Through writing this blog I have rediscovered my love of the act of writing. While I’m winding down the ‘Where the Red Kite Flies’ project, I’ve realised I still want to keep the writing going. I'll still link to any project and photography news but this blog will focus more about re-learning to play with photography and moving away from the constraints of project work. There will also be more random posts which may very well have little or nothing to do with photography. 

I hope you continue to enjoy my writing and I’d love it if you joined me on Substack and follow ‘A Fallow Year’. You can find me here: https://substack.com/@amandajaxnphoto

Sheffield Exhibition of Where the Red Kite Flies 

Ron Johnson Research Room, Level C of Geography and Planning Building

University of Sheffield, Winter Street, S10 2TN

January 31st-March 22nd 2024 

To confirm weekly exhibition opening times please email Jenny Pickerill on j.m.pickerill@sheffield.ac.uk