Festival Bowland: Bowland Lecture

Date: 7th October 2025.

Location: The Tithe Barn, Browsholme Hall

Cost: £5 per person

Time: 19:30 - 21:00

It is sometimes said that Bowland is a landscape of ‘living memory’, where millennia of human and non-human stories have shaped a place enclosed from the pace of modernity.

In this year’s Bowland Lecture, “Are You Lost? The past, present and future of Bowland”, Dr Rob St John explores a series of historical moments over the last 150 years to narrate a story of the invention of contemporary Bowland, including, significantly, the designation of the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1964.

Drawing on his Bowland roots and a year of working with people across the landscape – farmers, urban children, estate workers, archaeologists, fell runners, historians, poets, environmentalists, policy makers and more – in the Are You Lost? project, Rob will explore the relationship between landscape memory and imagination in Bowland to ask: what does the future hold for this special place?

(Under 18s must be accompanied by an adult.)

£5 per person. Booking needed. Please book via this link LCC Events

Admission proceeds will be donated to local charities, Slaidburn Archive and Champion Bowland.

Thanks to the kind generosity of the Parker family, the lecture will take place once again at the Tithe Barn, Browsholme Hall. It will be hosted by Champion Bowland.

(Are You Lost? has been commissioned by the Forest of Bowland National Landscape and is produced by Lancaster Arts. It is part of the national programme called Nature Calling, with executive producers Activate Performing Arts and the National Landscapes Association and is funded by Arts Council England and Defra.)

Full event details, including location map, will be sent approximately one week before the event.