Motion/Emotion: Picturing Translocal Landscapes in theNurturing EcologiesResearch Project

In the Nurturing Ecologies research project the aim is to consider the emotional value of the Lake District landscape to mobile, translocal communities living in Lancashire and Cumbria. The research attempts to capture in the visual form of a set of paintings, the sensory responses to the English Lake District that these translocal communities have. The Lake District is a site where historically a singular narrative of English sensibility has been forged. This paper disrupts singular notions of 'love', 'hate' and 'fear', through the process of exploring issues of motion and emotion, power difference and identifications with cultures of landscape. Here, the translocal English participate in a visual methodology which makes tangible emotions figured through post‐colonial mobility, secured in a landscape of national sensibility. Keywords: translocalmobilityemotionlandscapevisual culture Acknowledgements Special thanks to David Conradson, Deirdre MacKay and my anonymous 'referee 1', for editorial advice on shaping this piece. Thanks also to a very generous Mobilities editorial team, including Mimi Sheller, John Urry and Pennie Drinkall. Notes 1. Historically, many writers have researched that sites of 'national' sensibility such as the national park (Cosgrove et al., Citation1996) and some have argued that these sites have often served to secure an exclusionary national identity and culture (Daniels, Citation1993; Jazeel, Citation2005). Individual affective registers or emotions have not generally been part of these analyses; however, William Wordsworth's own fear and awe within the Lake District is well documented. 2. Wordsworth's poetry deeply reflected his visceral response of terror and awe (Williams, Citation1973, p. 129) beyond the well‐documented 'nostalgia for a rural economy, and a simple life among pastoral mountains' (King, Citation1966, p. 171). Historically, the Lake District has been a site of tourism, 'pilgrimage' and emotional connection since the 17th century. Williams (Citation1973) argues that this is because it is a landscape seen to be 'left in its original elemental state'. Appreciation of 'wild' and untamed nature emerged as a reaction to previously celebrated classical landscape formations (Darby, Citation2000, p. 52). Schama (Citation1995) argues that the experience and appreciation of the delightful horror of the mountainous regions of Europe marked the emergence of a Romanticism '[b]orn from the oxymoron of agreeable horror, Romanticism was nursed on calamity' (p. 450). 3. Writers such as Bingley (Citation2003) and McGregor (Citation2005) have recently outlined the continued importance of small group research. Both argue that values of 'landscape' and 'nature' are produced in a 'social' dynamic that reflects the values, vocabulary and discourses of wider society.