Crichton Carbon Centre
Published: 28 September 2026
Plantation to Peatland
Host organisation: Crichton Carbon Centre
Project title: Plantation to Peatland
Project description
We are currently exploring creative monitoring within our peatland restoration work. Contemporary artists, like contemporary scientists, conduct research to reveal new insights into the world around us. Accordingly, creative practice holds potential to contribute to new forms of knowledge and new ways of seeing and understanding environmental issues and complexities. At CCC, we recognise that art can be innovative and unconventional (novel), and that through combining creative (art) and ecological (science) approaches, our understanding of environmental function and use can be greatly deepened.
We would welcome an emerging creative practitioner/researcher to work in residence with us to creatively explore a peatland that is currently buried beneath a crop of Sitka spruce; a commercial plantation scheduled to be felled in 2029. After clear-felling, the land will be restored back to a peatland through what’s known as ‘forest to bog’ restoration’. Scientific monitoring of the site has begun. We have a 14m high flux tower measuring and recording the upward and downward movement of air-parcels containing greenhouses gases above the tree canopy. This is generating extremely useful data that will help us understand carbon emission and storage before clear felling, during the fell and restoration processes, and when the bog is restored. However, this scientific monitoring alone cannot capture the complexities of the site, specifically how it is currently used and appreciated by local communities and their connections to the forest landscape; the more-than human connections; and broader nature aesthetics. An arts approach: experiential processes, empirical research, action research, and creative outcomes, can capture the present day as observed, experienced, and recorded through the lens of an artist. This ‘creative monitoring’ will begin to produce a rich picture of forest to bog restoration, tracking the site from today, as a plantation on peat, to 2036 when it will once more be a functioning peatland habitat.
This intern residence opportunity is at the beginning of a ten-year programme of creative monitoring at this site.
Outputs
We want to support a creative practitioner who can take inspiration from a Sitka plantation growing on deep peat, and the communities connected to this landscape.
This is the beginning of a creative monitoring process that will accumulate over a ten-year period, therefore, at this stage, we are not seeking results per-se. What we would like is a creative process that records and comments on the current situation of the site. We are open to all and any forms of creative practice that are environmentally friendly, non-extractive, and non-polluting
In person/remote/hybrid
Hybrid.
We anticipate that the intern will work partly on-site, partly from their base (remote), and partly in our office accommodation.
Benefits to the researcher
The researcher will benefit from the placement though working on a live project. They will have access to the site and CCC’s staff experience and knowledge. They will work closely with, and be mentored by, CCC’s artist/creative producer who has over 20 years’ experience in socially engaged ecological art and project management.
They will gain skills and insights into peatland restoration, peatland ecology, trans and inter-disciplinary working, project development, socially engaging methods within rural communities, and creative monitoring and evaluation.
Key relationships
Within our organisation, the intern will work with peatland ecologists, an artist/creative producer specialising in socio-ecological practice, and our education officer.
CCC work in partnership with government environment departments, for example, Forest and Land Scotland, and local environmental NGOs and SCIOs. Through these partnerships, the intern will have the opportunity to work with woodland, costal, and riparian ecologists.
Our audiences are mainly rural, consisting of landowners, smallholders, village communities and more isolated communities which include people living off grid. The age range is from junior school through to retired people in their 70's and 80's. The public we engage with includes the same, but also extends to local towns, namely Dumfries, Castle Douglas, and Newton Stewart. Our wider national and international reach is through conferences and events, and talks at Galleries and arts organisations, most recently, the National Gallery Scotland.
We also engage with stakeholders and policy makers and have exhibited our work at Holyrood.
Subject areas
This opportunity would be relevant to the following subject areas:
Creative Writing; Dance; Music; Visual Arts; Aesthetics.
Person specification
A1. Knowledge Base
- Essential: Subject knowledge; Research methods – theoretical knowledge; Research methods – Practical application; Information Seeking.
A2. Cognitive Abilities
- Desirable: Critical thinking; Evaluating; Problem solving.
A3. Creativity
- Essential: Inquiring minds; Intellectual insight; Innovation; Argument construction; Intellectual risk.
B1. Personal qualities
- Essential: Enthusiasm; Responsibility.
- Desirable: Integrity; Self-confidence; Self-reflection.
B2. Self management
- Essential: Time management; Responsiveness to change; Work-life balance.
- Desirable: Preparation and prioritisation; Commitment to research.
B3. Professional & career development
- Essential: Responsiveness to opportunities.
- Desirable: Continuing professional development; Networking.
C1. Professional conduct
- Essential: Ethics, principles and sustainability; Respect and confidentiality; Attribution and co-authorship; Appropriate practice.
- Desirable: Health and Safety.
C2. Research management
- Essential: Project planning and delivery.
- Desirable: Research Strategy.
D1. Working with others
- Essential: Team working; Collegiality; Equality and diversity; Collaboration.
D2. Communication & dissemination
- Essential: Communication methods.
- Desirable: Communication media.
D3. Engagement & impact
- Essential: Public Engagement.
- Desirable: Society and culture.
First published: 28 September 2026