ARTIST RESIDENCY: Eilean Shona

The Royal Society of Sculptors is delighted to announce Hazel Reeves MRSS is the winner of the month-long Eilean Shona Artist Residency 2026.

Hazel is perhaps best known for her public commissions telling stories in bronze of the struggles for social justice and telling the stories of the lives of those missing from our visual and written histories. But her artistic practice is becoming wilded, her studio being at the heart of the pioneering rewilding Knepp Estate. She sees herself as a sculptural choreographer who harnesses the sounds of nature to tell stories of hope, of burgeoning biodiversity in nature havens like Knepp, where nightingales thrive yet face cataclysmic declines elsewhere. Hazel’s passion is creating playful, immersive, affecting nature soundscape experiences for all –involving birdsong and movement/dance – that participants find freeing,thrilling, joyous. These events bring people closer to nature, closer to each other.

Hazel says: “I’m absolutely thrilled to be awarded the Eilean Shona residency 2026. It offers me a rare opportunity to think-forward, as I transition towards a more fluid multi-disciplinary, site-responsive, nature-immersed practice. This residency will build confidence in my artistic intuition and obsessions, including by providing time to play and experiment on the boundaries between disciplines – sculpture and sound – and discover what being a collaborator with nature means for me. I don’t simply want to re-present nature, but become part of its tidal rhythms, its extraordinary landscapes, ecologies and shifting weather systems. I want to jointly tell Eilean Shona’s inspiring story of hope, in our times of despondency.”