Place
What if place is not just where we are, but potential that we are in relationship with?
CoLab Dudley established roots on Dudley High Street in 2016 and the relationships we made since have carried our work to woodlands, waterways, neighbourhoods and towns across Dudley borough. And into nearby habitats, where humans and the rest of nature are unbounded by lines on maps, and instead follow water courses, tree lines and rock formations.
We think of Dudley as a living place shaped by deep time, by industry and extraction, by communities and cultures, by more-than-human life, and by the relationships that continue to unfold here. We are part of a growing network of local people becoming aware and responsive to the ecological, cultural and historical realities of Dudley.
Knowing a place
There are many ways of knowing a place. Through maps and data. Through history and archives. Through lived experience. And also through story, sensing, memory, imagination and attention. We don’t claim to fully understand this place. But we are learning to listen differently. This attention to place runs through all of our work.
- In how we notice learn together, using detectorism.
- In how we imagine futures
- In how we build relationships
↗ bioregioning - this collection of stories illuminates some of the ways we are coming to understand our place by cultivating bioregioning practices at a local scale.
↗ Dudley High Street - we have a decade of observations, sensing, experiments, imaginings and research focused on Dudley High Street, the location of our lab space.
What do you notice about the place you are in?
What stories might it hold?
What might it be asking of you?
Work by our collaborators
Being here
In May 2026 four local people inhabited Alder Coppice for 24 hours... to be with the woodland, to become part of the woodland and for the woodland to become part of us – to correspond. 'Being Here' is part of Getting into Hot Water, an art-based inquiry strand of collaborative work through Dudley People's School for Climate Justice.
Photos by Helen Garbett
A call to land and time
An invocation for the Council of All Beings held in Hawbush Gardens in summer 2025 was crafted by local artist and poet Claire Tedstone. The opening extract below is a call to land and time. This was part of our Dudley People's School for Climate Justice work.
Both named for the flora of the land Upon which we stand
Land that is alive - That once saw the briar rose thrive In a clearing of ancient woodland
A woodland that was once a seabed that rose from below an ancient sea, tropical and shallow as Mother Earth danced.
Her movements - folding and faulting the landscape causing the heat of the heart of her to escape As molten magma
Her bleeding heart cooled in cracks and stacks of rock emerged
As Lush vegetation grew and died the remains were submerged - destined to hide Within swampy forest floor Where time and pressure and the heat of her heart transformed death into black gold.
Seams of coal That fuelled a revolution
Human kind Dug into the depths of her shaping and scarring this precious earth And choking the lungs of the life she had birthed.
If you look closely She’ll show you her story.
If you listen carefully You’ll hear Whispers echo through time That tell of all that she has been, all that she has seen All that she has heard and felt and known and grown.
A puddle
During a Stories of Place gathering in June 2025, co-creator Laura Onions drew a Wren’s Nest puddle scanned in Polycam, curious about how the scan might translate into a drawing. She chose white chalk as rainwater turns white on Wren’s Nest due to the limestone. This was a prototype to make something based on micro landscapes. ↓
Parts of this website page were developed through collaborative writing involving the CoLab Dudley team and AI-supported dialogue.
↗ Read more about our approach to AI and digital sobriety here.