Famous Five filming locations inspire New Forest Artist Residency

The New Forest National Park Authority, in partnership with Sway-based arts and educational charity SPUD, will welcome artist Dean Kelland as the latest Artist in Residence this May. Locations including Lepe, Exbury and Burley, were prominent in the TV adaptation of The Famous Five and brought the New Forest to national audiences. Now nearly 50 years on, new Artist in Residence Dean Kelland will revisit these sites as a starting point for his work.

Dean will explore these locations as a springboard for a wider investigation into the Forest as a signifier of ‘home’ – a place where memories, storytelling and lived experience accumulate over time. Also of interest to Dean are the gender archetypes presented in the books, and their connections to ideas of childhood and home.

A key part of Dean’s approach is collaboration. Through workshops and community engagement, he will interact with local people to co-create new pieces, inviting reflection on the New Forest’s cultural and media heritage.

Jim Mitchell, Access and Learning Manager at the New Forest National Park Authority said:

‘We’re delighted to welcome Dean Kelland as Artist in Residence. Programmes like this give artists the time and space to immerse themselves in the Forest, and in doing so, create work that helps all of us see and connect with this special place in new and meaningful ways.’

At the same time British artist duo boredomresearch – Vicky Isley and Paul Smith – will return to the gallery space at SPUD with their exhibition Spring Fall, developed from their 2025 residency.

Boredomresearch’s exhibition is a meditation on memory, impermanence and the incalculability of loss in the natural world. At its centre is a moving image installation capturing the final fall of a bark-stripped beech tree in Bolderwood. Leaves appear to move in defiance of gravity, carrying traces of forest memory and evoking a sense of suspension between presence and loss.

Using animation and programming, boredomresearch simulate and reimagine natural processes, combining scientific research with creativity to reveal the interconnections between people and the more-than-human world. In Spring Fall, mathematical gestures hint at attempts to measure and model natural systems, highlighting the tension between the desire to quantify and the impossibility of fully grasping ecological loss.

The work was developed during their New Forest Artist Residency in October 2025 through exchanges with rangers, ecologists and archivists, grounding the exhibition in the lived and managed realities of the New Forest landscape.

Now in its fifth year, the New Forest Artist in Residence Programme, funded by Arts Council England, continues to develop a creative partnership between the arts and the people who work, live, and visit the New Forest. The residencies explore how we think about the landscape, how different communities interact with them, and the challenges they face, both now and in the future.

Boredomresearch will be exhibiting Spring Fall at SpudWorks, Station Road, Sway SO41 6BA from 1–30 May. Free entry.

Dean Kelland will be in residency at SpudWorks throughout May, and will exhibit his work in October 2026.