When Cement Fields invited us to create work at the site, we immediately felt an immense sense of responsibility. Our first meetings were full of questions of how to honour this site not only as guests on this land and in this community, but also how to honour it as hosts on this land, creating new community. Through our research, site visits, and conversations, we excavated the layers of the Oare Gunpowder Works. 

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For 300 years, from the 17th century until 1936, the Works was an industrial site that produced a weapon that was used to kill and destroy. But it was also a place where people worked everyday, made their livelihoods, and found community. Today, the site bears evidence of its darker past through its ruins, but it is also a nature park where plants and animals make a home, people find quiet and volunteers donate hours of care, and parents take their children to play. On 15th of March 2025, we transformed this place again into a place to gather, to think together, to make together, to be together.