On day 7 of groving: Silver Spoon Jacquie Campbell's sculpture has been placed near the cafe in the Abbey Gardens. 

Recent research demonstrates that bees have a preference for neonicotinoid laced sugar solution, a pesticide that drastically affects their fitness or kills them depending on dosage. Use of three neonics in sugar beet seed treatment were banned in the UK in 2018 under EU law. As a member of the public, its a difficult subject to get to grips with despite our geographic immersion in this zone of innovation and conflict.

bee
     your dance
               caught
          in honeypop lollipop
sting blunted in a flow
          of amberglow
     your jaunty stripes
          your flirty wings
          all bristling attention
ready to burst through
          the boiled gold
                     of your prison walls
 
perhaps
     you are
          the last bee
               preserved
                     to remind us
                          how sweet
                               life was
 
Sue Burge

Jacquie Campbell As someone who is simultaneously baffled and fascinated by the everyday world, my artistic activity allows me to think through the questions that niggle at the back of my mind. I am often absorbed with how we perceive and connect with barely visible and overlooked processes that exist within our surroundings and everyday life. I construct spaces, journeys and sometimes objects that invite ‘noticing’. I am interested in how we can practice ‘deep looking’, beyond the visual, using all our senses. I wonder whether a stronger understanding and better connection with these unexamined processes would lead to different ways of being in the world: a sense of wellness and a new environmental conversation.
​Instagram @ jaccampbellrojo @flow.east @wildhabits2020 www.jaccampbell.com

Sue Burge is a freelance mentor, creative writing and film studies tutor based in North Norfolk. Her first poetry collection In the Kingdom of Shadows (Live Canon) and debut pamphlet Lumière (Hedgehog Poetry Press) were published in 2018. More information at www.sueburge.uk

Today Rod Bugg's 'biscuits' have appeared in Looms Lane, celebrating the plasticity of clay. The poem is by Sue Burge. 

ship’s biscuits
     
hard tack   each one
     teardrop stamped
weevil ridden survivors
     of shipwreck and mutiny
 
how sailors would have loved
     to discover honey
locked in these bonehard rusks
     thick unexpected slick
their rolling dreams sweetened
with the buzzing of an English summer
 
Sue Burge
​
Rodd Bugg is a sculptor who works primarily in clay and drawing. He has been represented by Galerie de Witte Voet, Amsterdam for many years, showing in June 2017 in 4 British Artists with Martin Smith, Ken Eastman and Clare Twomey and was featured in the RAW Art Fair in 2014 and the forty years anniversary show in January 2015. In 2013 he had six pieces of work in the Discerning Eye exhibition at the Mall Galleries and won the Humphreys Purchase Prize. In 2014 he had a solo exhibition at North House Gallery in Manningtree, Essex. 

Sue Burge is a freelance mentor, creative writing and film studies tutor based in North Norfolk. Her first poetry collection In the Kingdom of Shadows (Live Canon) and debut pamphlet Lumière (Hedgehog Poetry Press) were published in 2018. www.sueburge.uk 

Deborah Pipe's collection of ceramic spoons is clustered behind the Angel Hotel, in Angel Lane. The response is by Deborah Bowkis.

Shallow spoons shaped as if a thumb 
pressed them from the earth 
 
and then, blasé,
flung them away, like beggars.
 
Strewn on fine linen or silk
they’d be a talking piece.
 
A centrepiece of cultural contrivance,
pressed into silver service.
 
Deborah Bowkis

Deborah Pipe focuses on the dynamics of clay. After a career working in mental health services she is highly conscious of art as a media for social change and a form of self-expression and healing. The multi-disciplinary and responsive nature of groving and opportunity to make social comment made the invitation to join this project particularly attractive and exciting.
Twitter @Deblouma Instagram  @pipedeborah Facebook deborah.pipe  deblouma.wordpress.com

Deborah Bowkis has published through competition prizes and in anthologies, including Ink Pantry Sea of Ink and Voices of the Brecks. She currently works as an academic and has taught creative writing courses and workshops in Suffolk. In 2016 she set up a thriving creative writing group, Left to Write, in Bury St. Edmunds. 
​https://greenacrewriters.blogspot.com, http://www.breakingnewground.org.uk

groving turns gritty today, with Dean Reddick's sculpture, placed on Angel Hill, and Kevin Acott's response. 

Costs
Now when the man at the corner store
Says sugar's gone up another two cents,
And bread one,
And there's a new tax on cigarettes--
We remember the job we never had,
Never could get,
And can't have now
Because we're colored.
 
From Langston Hughes' 'Harlem'.
 
I used to meet the sugar factory once a year, see it looming, chained, growling, know it had been waiting for me. I didn’t speak to it, but we exchanged thoughts. I would glance at it, spoon the yoghurt my mother had given me more quickly, more intensely, and we would leave it behind. We were off on holiday to my grandparents’ in Lowestoft, to the edge of our island, the edge of ages. 
 
The punch, the embrace of its crumpled hugeness and defiant ugliness and its sniffling stench would always remind me of the dog-food factory near the Blackwell Tunnel, the one we'd pass (twelve times a year) on our way to our other grandparents. I loved them both, these brutal, immoveable animals, but they bothered me.

On one of those grandparent journeys, the people would got darker and darker and poorer and poorer. On the other, they’d get whiter and whiter and richer and richer. On each, we’d listen to John Lee Hooker and The Carpenters. We were happy, either way, emerging from our halfway house. Except... except the sugar factory reminded me that all is not what it seems. It reminded me that wild, flat, pretty, quiet Suffolk was person and system too, could be harsh and beaten and frightening too. And that poor people, dark people maybe, could live here too. 

Nothing is pure. Nothing is just sweet. Nothing costs nothing. And no-one is ever free.
 
Kevin Acott

Dean Reddick is an artist and an art therapist. He uses a range of media to make sculptures and drawings, often based on his fascination with birds and trees. He enjoys working collaboratively and is a regular exhibitor at Walthamstow's E17 Art Trail as well as being a co-founder member of the artist cooperative CollectConnect.  www.deanreddick.blogspot.co.uk

Kevin Acott is a writer, lecturer, whiskey lover, and Spurs sufferer. He’s a sort of left libertarian/sort of anarchist who feels strangely attracted to French chansons, Greenland and Joseph Conrad as he gets older. His publishing, blog and projects can be found at  http://www.kevinacott.com/. Twitter @speranza6162 Instagram @speranza6162

Julia Manheim's instrumental sculptures were placed today outside the Rehearsal Rooms in St Andrew's Street South and the Hunter Club in Guildhall Street - sites slightly outside the defined area for groving, but too relevant to reject! The sculptures signpost the film at vimeo.com/user10128235 and Tim Welton's response follows below. 

Julia Manheim is an artist and curator. She originally trained as a jeweller and became well known in the 1980's for her large-scale experimental jewellery and body wear. Since then, her work has encompassed sculpture, installation art and short films which can be viewed at: https://vimeo.com/user10128235. She has worked as lead artist on several public art projects. Throughout, her work has been distinguished by her close observation, ability to find interest in the seemingly mundane, a strong sense of colour and an interest in re-using discarded materials. She is the author of the Sustainable Jewellery book published by A&C Black. https://m2gallery.com/julia-manheim

Tim Welton is a theatre practitioner who, as an actor and director has worked on numerous productions including Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (Royal National Theatre) London Road (Royal National Theatre) Dancing at Lughnasa (Garrick Theatre) and Cabaret (Lyric and Savoy Theatre and National Tours). He has written for theatre (Carnival UK) and online digital media (BBC Radio Jam), and a new musical commission with Three Pin Productions, the brainchild of West End Performer Ruthie Henshall and Musical Director Paul Schofield. Twitter @timwelton  https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tim-welton-3711742b