This exhibition summons this vanishing wildness back into existence in a joyful celebration of nature words and the natural world they invoke. In a 2008 National Trust survey, only a third of primary age children could identify a magpie, though nine out of ten could name a Dalek. In 2002 the results of a Cambridge University survey, published in Science, found that British schoolchildren were able to identify Pokémon far more accurately than species of common UK wildlife.

On tour from Compton Verney, the exhibition presented a new series of poems and accompanying illustrations that conjure the beauty of nature, for visitors of all ages. The Lost Words is a unique collaborative project between award-winning author Robert Macfarlane, and acclaimed artist and author Jackie Morris, in response to their belief that nature is in retreat from our children’s stories and imaginations.

The Lost Words is that book - a work that has already cast its extraordinary spell on hundreds of thousands of people and begun a grass-roots movement to re-wild childhood across Britain, Europe, and North America.The relationship between language and the living world was celebrated in this exhibition of poetry and illustration. By the magic of word, they sought to summon these words again into the voices, stories, and dreams of children and adults alike, and to celebrate the wonder and importance of everyday nature.

Ten years later, Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris set out to make a “spell book” that will conjure back 20 of these lost words and the beings they name, from acorn to wren. The news of these substitutions - the outdoor and natural being displaced by the indoor and virtual - became seen by many as a powerful sign of the growing gulf between childhood and the natural world. Among the words taking their place were attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail. The list of these “lost words” included acorn, adder, bluebell, dandelion, fern, heron, kingfisher, newt, otter, and willow. Apparently they were no longer being used enough by children to merit their place in the dictionary. In 2007, when a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary - widely used in schools around the world - was published, a sharp-eyed reader soon noticed that around 40 common words concerning nature had been dropped.

The lost words jackie morris