Riding with the animals

Herd invades Millennium Trail

The first of two Join our HERD! events to be held in Prince Edward County took place on Sunday afternoon. In an idea dreamed up by Krista Dalby, artistic director with The Department of Illumination, the fun began with an outdoor workshop in Benson Park where the idea was for people and bicycles to transform into animals for the afternoon. The theme involved recycled materials, mostly cardboard, where piles of decorated tails and ears and eyes were waiting to take on new life. Department of Illumination artists were on hand to help in the transformation process that also involved marker pens and coloured paper. Embellishments to enable fantastical creatures on wheels to come to life came in the form of wings and antlers, feathers and fur, and tassels for handlebars made of repurposed floaties. “I think everyone has a secret animal inside of them, or two or three,” says Victoria Taylor, cofounder of DeRAIL. The fun continued as participants were able to not only adopt an animal persona, whether it was an elephant, a cat or dog, a bird or a dragon, or other inventive creation, but also a character name of their choosing to go with their adopted animal character.

Join our HERD! is a joint event in conjunction with Toronto-based DeRAIL, a platform for art and architecture. “We started DeRAIL to bring artists and audiences together to think differently about the outdoor spaces that we share,” said Taylor. “It’s about how those spaces are designed and how we move through them in other ways than just the familiar ways of moving from A to B.” She said there are lots of possibilities for these types of spaces. “We see this as being a cultural space and a place for the arts, so we work with artists.” DeRAIL’s last County project took place last fall and winter with Conrad Beaubien’s Walking with Thunder project. “We had monthly walks with a rescue donkey along the Millennium Trail and that was amazing, and now this is our second project working with Krista and The Department of Illumination and her team,” said Taylor, aka Olahao. “We are really excited to be doing this in another way that has been more about the celebration of life and getting, through maybe on the other side of the pandemic, and having had the joyful day together in public spaces.”

Stephanie Bell struts her stuff at Join our HERD! Picton last Sunday.

Once every person and every bicycle were decorated and transformed, the next step involved a leisurely 45-minute ride together as a herd along the Millennium Trail. “We have all become creatures now and we are going to spend the afternoon as creatures,” said Taylor. She asked participants to think about the other creatures along the trail that “struggle and breathe and live with us.” The Department of Illumination’s Nella Casson said it’s about migration too. “It’s part of life, you have to start at one point and you get to the next point and for some animals of course, its life and death to do that and this is a little migration.” Taylor also spoke to the idea of the trail as a wildlife corridor. “It is so really fun to talk about knowing that there are all these little creatures always along the hedgerows along the trail and now we are another layer of creatures along the trail,” she said.

The riders made their way to the herd celebration at Parsons Brewing Company for live music, camaraderie, refreshment, along with a few more surprises thrown in for good measure. It was then back on the trail as the herd returned to the starting point. “Thank you for jumping into this wacky project and taking the leap with us to join our herd,” said Dalby, aka Herd Bird, where she reminded what it means to be part of a herd. “A herd sticks together, looks out for each other, is kind to each other, and that is how we are going to operate today.”

“One of the things that I found super interesting was just thinking about this Millennium Trail as an opportunity for arts and culture as a space that has not really been thought of in that way until DeRAIL came into our lives,” explains Dalby. “Throughout the last year, I have absolutely fallen in love with the Millennium Trail and I go out biking all the time and explore different parts of the trail and it is such a gem of the County that I really didn’t know about until I started working with this project.” Taylor says what is exciting about this project in particular is that it is different from every project they do. “It is so different because every artist and artist group is so different, but what is really exciting for me is that it really matches with this idea of jostling with what happens in public space, or jostling the idea of what people think can happen in public space, or what they are allowed to do in public space,” she said.

Walking with Thunder was about having the donkey as the portal of feeling comfortable to approach art, to want to pet him and then asking what are you doing, so somehow this is also with animals.” Casson says it’s nice to bring art to the trail, especially to those who may not necessarily be into art or into nature. “The people that are on the trail are on the trail a lot these days; you meet naturalists, you meet athletes, you meet people who are really concerned about recreation and they are not always the same people who are engaged in the arts community, so it’s almost like a takeover and where we all meet; this is where we all converge which is a cool thing.”