Are You Lost?

Rob chats to creative partner Kate O’Farrell about the creation of the textile pieces in Are You Lost? Her work draws from the cotton mill weaving practices of East Lancashire, the textile traditions of Gujarat, where a significant diaspora in Nelson is from, and natural materials and processes derived from the Bowland landscape. Fabrication techniques include spinning, embroidery, wet and dry fel...

In this episode we tune in to a conversation on art, nature and community held as part of the final Bowland installation of Are You Lost? in Gisburn Forest in August 2025. The discussion is led by Jocelyn Cunningham, director of Lancaster Arts, and features Jenny Rutter, Chief Executive of the British Textile Biennial, Associate Director of Super Slow Way, and Chair of Creative Lancashire, and Ann...

In this episode, Rob speaks to choir leader and composer Jules Evans at the second installation of Are You Lost? in Dunsop Bridge in August 2025. We hear about Jules' approach to socially-engaged art, and his collaborations with Rob working taking young people out into Bowland to sing together. Jules tells us about his work with a new choir, The Stonechats, who will present new work based on the m...

In this episode, artist Rob St John introduces the year-long community work in and around Bowland which has shaped the Are You Lost? project. He describes how the film, sound and textile installation pieces have been created with local people, alongside artists Kate O'Farrell and Jules Evans. We then hear the sound work itself, featuring the voices of three local people who attended workshops – Ni...

In this episode we meet Jane Routh, a poet and woodland restorationist on the Tatham Fells in Bowland. We talk about native woodland restoration on her land, the histories of enclosure and drove roads in the area, and how living and working in this corner of Bowland has inspired her award-winning poetry. Jane reads her poem ‘One Place’ from her kitchen table looking out over the fells. We finish b...

In this episode we visit two farms located in very different landscapes across Bowland. First, the group of young people from Yes Hub in Nelson who made the ‘Pendle’s Hidden Gems’ episode of this podcast visit Northwood Farm, just outside the town, and overlooked by Pendle Hill. The group meet Philip Marginson, a beef and sheep farmer who regularly runs educational visits to the farm. Saud, Dua, Z...

This episode was recorded over a series of workshops with young people attending the Yes Hub centre in Nelson in February 2025. After receiving training on narrative writing, interviewing and sound recording from Rob, the group planned, wrote and recorded this podcast together. Working around the broad theme of ‘home and the hills’, the group built on their shared love of cold case podcasts to exp...

Rob meets walking guide and historian Nick Burton on the Nick of Pendle, and then archaeologist Dr Rick Peterson at the Fairy Holes Cave above Whitewell in the Forest of Bowland. Their chats cover Pendle Hill’s radical histories, rights of access movements, Quaker revelations, the founding of the Pennine Way, folklore, cairns, ruins, caves, death…

This episode was recorded by the Marsden Makers at Marsden Heights Community College in Nelson, Lancashire. After a creative workshop spent building nests out of natural materials, the students decided to record a conversation between themselves, their teacher, and artist Rob St John, to talk about their relationships to nature, access to the landscape and…

In the second episode of the Are You Lost? podcast, artist Rob St John talks to Nature Calling writer and rapper OneDa. Speaking in Thompson Park, Burnley, OneDa takes us through her explorations of Bowland, and her public workshops with young people around Pendle. We hear from a series of young people from Burnley and Nelson telling us about…