LONDON.- The Lost Words is a unique collaborative project between the award-winning author Robert Macfarlane, and acclaimed artist and author Jackie Morris, that seeks to reconnect people with the natural world. Originated by Compton Verney, the exhibition presents a new series of poems and accompanying illustrations that conjure the beauty of nature, for visitors young and old.

The Lost Words is a response to Macfarlane and Morris’s belief that nature is in retreat from our children’s stories and imaginations. In 2002 the results of a Cambridge University survey, published in Science, found that British schoolchildren were able to identify Pokémon far more accurately than species of common UK wildlife. In a 2008 National Trust survey, only a third of primary age children could identify a magpie, though nine out of ten could name a Dalek. A later Wildlife Trust survey focused on adults found that a third of participants were unable to identify a barn owl, three-quarters unable to identify an ash tree, and two-thirds feeling that they had “lost touch with nature”.

This exhibition summons this vanishing wildness back into existence in a joyful celebration of nature words and the natural world they invoke.

Robert Macfarlane has created twenty acrostic poems or ‘spells’ focused on common nature words that are fading from use as the species themselves decline, while Jackie Morris, inspired by her lifelong passion for Britain’s landscapes and wildlife, has painted beautiful, iridescent watercolours that capture first the absence of the plant or creature within its habitat and then its return. Together these works take viewers on a journey in which the familiar is magical once more.

The Lost Words explores the widening gulf between childhood and the natural world in the 21st century, but also speaks to an important aspect of the Foundling Hospital’s ethos. With its physical presence in the countryside, and its practice of sending children to be fostered by rural families for the first five years of their lives, the Hospital maintained the importance of children’s relationship with the natural world, and the links between outdoor play and wellbeing. Items from the Hospital archive that relate to the importance placed on fresh air and the children’s education, such as reading games and aids, some with lost or archaic vocabulary, are displayed alongside the artwork, demonstrating the institution’s forwardthinking health and education practices. Not only does the exhibition evoke the Hospital’s history, but it also demonstrates the power of illustration and words to spark imagination and delight, much like nature itself.

Kathleen Palmer, Curator: Exhibitions & Displays at the Foundling Museum said: ‘The Lost Words embodies the idea, fundamental to the Foundling Hospital’s story, that the power of creativity can achieve real good in the world. Its emphasis on the wellbeing, education and inspiration of children through the natural world makes the exhibition a perfect fit for the Foundling Museum.’

Robert Macfarlane said: ‘I am thrilled the exhibition will be moving to the Foundling Museum. For it to show at one of the most important museums of childhood in the country - and in the middle of a city - is deeply exciting.’

Jackie Morris said: ‘It’s such an honour to be invited to exhibit at the Foundling Museum amongst so many stories and a wealth of art. There are echoes of profound sadness around the Museum which will add another deep layer to our project about wild things.’

The exhibition is accompanied by The Lost Words: A Spell Book, a beautifully illustrated hardback book, published by Hamish Hamilton, which captures the irreplaceable magic of language and nature for all ages.