Photos: Christopher Doyle
Animal Crackers.
Over three Christmases a joyful and satirical family of animals took over this extraordinary National Trust managed stately home and hunting lodge. Between 2023 and 2025 thousands of visitors celebrated the season while exploring themes around the changing human relationship with nature in the context of man made climate crisis as the animals created an imagined Christmas future (2023), Christmas Past (2024), and Christmas Present (2025).
Extraordinary hand made and carnivalesque animal artworks inhabited the grand and inspiring rooms, playfully provoking visitors to dress up, sing karaoke and pretend to eat dinner with beasts, all with a specially selected musical soundtrack.
Animal themed art-decorations, from birds, to monkeys, celebrated the many real animal stories emerging from the houses history as well as the Community groups and volunteers who made them.
Three impulses:
Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and imagining Christmas Past, present and future in the context of climate crisis.
The historical context of the house and the local environment.
The energy and enthusiasm of the house team and volunteers.
I loved everything about it, the story, the beautifully made animals…what a poignant way to show Christmas.