About
ONCA started with the idea of a gallery, a permanent place where artists could exhibit work inspired by our relationship with the environment, but that could also in turn help with the preservation of that environment.
It began in Bolivia, when I went there on a three-month ticket. Halfway through my travels I stopped in at a wildlife refuge – Comunidad Inti Wara Yassi – thinking I would volunteer for two weeks. I loved the animals I was looking after, but there were also spiders and mosquitoes, lots of rain, terrible toilets and hard work. I was looking forward to going home. Then, when I met Wayra, everything changed. She was a puma, who had been captured by hunters and sold on the black market as a house pet, abused and malnourished before being rescued by the refuge. Despite the best love and care possible, she was scared and frustrated. She wanted to be wild. But because she had been captured as a baby, she never could be.
Soon I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. I forget all the things I thought I needed and remembered all the things I hadn’t thought I wanted. Dirt. Mud. I got foot fungus. Worms laid eggs under my skin. I discovered I wasn’t that afraid of spiders. Wayra started to trust me, and in turn I trusted her. I didn’t stay for two weeks. I stayed for four months, left and returned for another ten, then six, then another seven…it has been six years now and even though I know she doesn’t see it like this, I have come to see Wayra as my closest friend.
The longer I stayed however, the more frustrated I got with the constant logging trucks, the forest fires, the shrinking jungle, the animals that turned up every day needing new homes. So I went back to England, and found the jungle to be a long way away. It helped to draw, paint and write about the world – and the puma – I had fallen in love with. I decided that I wanted to set up something that could inspire us to think about our relationship with the environment, bringing together conservationists, teachers and scientists with artists, performers, writers, clowns, musicians, poets…
ONCA was born, a place for artists to come together, using creativity to reconnect with the wild, both inside and out, and to help preserve it. We found an empty shop in the busy and regenerating London Road area of Brighton. It felt like a very long process, but it happened, and eventually the doors opened with Ghosts of Gone Birds – our flagship exhibition that raised a creative army for conservation. I couldn’t have asked for a better project to launch with. Now, ONCA is growing. Amazing volunteers keep jumping on board, bringing with them creative writing and outdoor education, theatre and poetry, stories of extinction, research sailing ships and mountains of plastic.
I will always go back to Bolivia, for as long as I can, but my visits are getting shorter and the time between them gets longer. So far, Wayra has remembered me every time. ONCA is One Network for Conservation and the Arts, but the word also means jaguar. We work with artists and communities, inspiring a creative response to ecological change and supporting frontline conservation projects. If you want to get involved, if you have a similar story about a connection with the wild, even if you just want a cup of tea and a chat…come by the gallery and say hello
