Every Snoseas experience has a genesis in a single plant.
From that genesis the experience moves outward into natural history, folklore, etymology and the sensory process of making — drawing, marking, attending — until something opens that could not have arrived any other way.
No skill or experience is required. The practice asks only for a willingness to sense a living thing slowly, to make without judgment and to be present with what is in the room. The rest arrives by itself.
Studio Experience
The studio experiences are the heart of the Snoseas practice. A maximum of three participants gather around a table in the studio at the centre of Totnes — the garden and wildflower terrace extending the space outward into the living world. A single flower from Shakespeare’s writing sits at the centre of the table.
Over three hours — with tea, with conversation, with long stretches of quiet making — the session moves through the natural history of the plant, its folklore and etymology, what Shakespeare understood it to mean, and what it tells us about our changing relationship with the natural world today.
The session moves toward Ma. The pause. The moment in which you are not an artist drawing a flower but simply, briefly, part of the same world the flower comes from.
Maximum 3 participants · 3 hours including breaks · All materials provided · Tea and coffee included · £75 per person
Landscape Experience
The landscape experiences take the Snoseas practice out of the studio and into the living world of South Devon. The Dart estuary. The reed beds and saltmarsh at Sharpham. The paths above Dartington. The wildflower margins of the lanes around Totnes.
Working one to one or in very small groups, the session responds to what is present in the landscape on that particular day — the plant flowering at the path’s edge, the quality of the light, the sound of the water. Making happens in the field — sketching, noting, attending. The landscape is not the backdrop. It is the experience.
These experiences are available throughout the year and follow the seasonal rhythm of the Devon landscape. Each season brings different plants, different light, different emotional registers — from the requiem of autumn into winter, through the invitation of spring, toward the celebration of summer.
One to one and small groups · 2 to 3 hours · £50 per hour · South Devon locations
CPD Experience
The Snoseas CPD programme offers English teachers a fresh and practical creative lens on the Shakespeare texts they are teaching — rooted in the natural world, the ecology of Devon, and the living history of the plants that appear throughout Shakespeare’s writing.
Each experience is built around a specific set text and a specific landscape. The current centrepiece programme takes The Tempest as its starting point — exploring the ecological history of land enclosure and the drainage of mudflats, the symbolism of storm and wilderness in the play, and the living ecology of the reed beds and saltmarsh at the Sharpham Estate on the River Dart. Half a day in the landscape, making, thinking and finding material that teachers can take directly back into the classroom.
Experiences can be built around any Shakespeare text currently being taught at GCSE or A-level. The Snoseas approach connects the literary with the ecological, the historical with the contemporary, the text on the page with the living world outside the window.
Half-day experiences · Schools and academy trusts · Studio and landscape · £400 per experience for up to 12 teachers