More Than Ponies /MTP is a roaming art programme for/about the New Forest and surrounding areas. Situating the forest as a site for radical contemporary art making and critical thinking around wider contemporary ideas, MTP is a forum for collaborative creative investigation into unexpected stories, histories, practices and ecologies.
Like the animals that live in the forest, MTP roams, moving across, between and within multiple sites, places, communities and beings. The programme is sometimes big and sometimes small. MTP is artists led (conceptually and logistcially ), has no core funding and is a not-for-profit CIC.
MTP collaborates with residents, communities, cultural and research institutions to enrich and diversify our offering.
MTP is fuelled by PaC
MTP supports Fair Pay for Artists
MTP was initiated by artist Laura Eldret and it is made possible thanks to participating audiences, collaborators, funders and contributing artists who have so generously contributed their time, thinking and making. These include:
Jennet Thomas
Jordan Baseman
Marcela Sinclair
Mick Peter
Rebecca Birch
Chris Welsby
Julian Stallabrass
Rosemary Shirley
Catherine Elwes
Anna Sofie Hvid
Jenny Holt
Lucy Reynolds
Javier Rodriguez
Victoria Lucas
Feral Practice
Marina Velez
Ben Roberts
ZOOX
Colin Perry
Michael Crane
Rachel Pimm
Hannah Lees
Mary Cork
Pondhead Conservation Trust
Rachael Champion
Benjamin Deakin
Simon Lee Dicker
Alexa de Ferranti
Louise Hall
Annabel Pettigrew
Paul Vivian
Jennie Savage
James Aldridge
Gemma Gore
Alys Scott-Hawkins
Melanie Rose
Liz Jones
Harry Meadows
Bedwyr Williams
Tai Shani
Jennet Thomas
Ox Art
Simon Bayliss
Landscape Painters Anonymous
Adam Chodzko
PaP
Jennifer Lewandowski
Cotelito
Evie Redwood
Katarzyna Depta-Garapich
Click artist and contributors hyperlinked names (ongoing work happening to do this) above for more info or browse MTP projects here.
More Than Ponies originated in 2019 aiming to look beyond the infamous ponies to discover what makes the New Forest a resonant place today, and in what ways ‘place’ can resonate. A series of artists field trips led to an Arts Council England-funded programme of events, gathering and artist commissions. The programme explored ideas of people and place, presenting artworks and projects with, for and about the diverse populations of the New Forest, from tourists and residents to birds and four-legged beasts. Creating genuine opportunity for everybody to access quality contemporary visual art in the New Forest, MTP generated creative activity to rethink, reimagine and reanimate the New Forest for audiences and future generations
MTP public programme was planned to take place from March 2020. In light of the Covid-19 pandemic activity was reconfigured to happen remotely and online. MTP’s programme took on a global dimension connecting people and places internationally with the forest; and importantly it supported artists with commission opportunities when most art institutions doors were closed .