In 2023 the British government renamed areas of outstanding natural beauty to national landscapes, and said part of their aim was to widen access to nature. The National Landscape Association, a government-organised body representing national landscapes and their conservation boards, advertise that “they are the UK’s nearby countryside – 66% of people in England (44 million) live within 30 minutes of a national landscape and at least 170 million people visit them every year”.
However, research by the Right to Roam campaign found that only a tiny fraction of most of these areas are freely accessible for walking and other forms of outdoor recreation. Vast swathes of the British landscape are unknown to us because we are banned from setting foot on it; in England and Wales we have access to just 11% of our land, and within even these limited areas much of what we can do is heavily restricted.
In “Contested Ground,” the sculpture made from a retrieved farm fence post, barbed wire, and a mirror poignantly captures the essence of duality around the Right to Roam debate in Britain. It points to the challenge of balancing individual rights, environmental stewardship, and social equity.
Whilst the mirror suggests the allure of freedom and exploration, the enclosing fence and barbed wire underscore the restrictions imposed on that freedom – we literally are unable to ‘touch’ the land we can often see. Together these elements juxtapose issues of freedom and restriction, nature and confinement, self and other, and reflect the complex tensions inherent in the discourse of land access.
Right to Roam is a colloquial way of describing an ancient custom that gives anyone the freedom to wander in open countryside, whether the land is privately or publicly owned.