Join us for a special film screening with Q&A with Huw Wahl & Jenna Ashton as part of the programme for the Performing Trees Exhibition

For What We Have To Do is a documentary made as part of a UKRI-funded research project - the UK Treescapes Programme - exploring how riparian woodlands can support climate resilience and ecological recovery.

📅 Thursday 26 November 2026

⏰ 6:30pm – 8:00pm

📍the Whitworth

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Filmed in the Colne Valley, West Yorkshire, the film weaves together intimate portraits of people who live in, care for, and creatively engage with the landscape: an artist working with natural materials; a mapmaker drawing from experience and movement; conservation volunteers dedicated to regeneration and renewal; a walker finding spiritual meaning in nature; National Trust members, wild swimmers, tree planters, musicians, poets, and farmers - all deeply engaged in the land.

What emerges is a layered reflection on care, relationship, and attention — and how art and creativity can become ways of knowing and sustaining the places we are part of. Rather than offering fixed answers, the film invites viewers into a profound contemplation of what it means to live with a landscape, and how our experiences of, in, and with nature might shape the futures we hope to inhabit.

Bios

Huw Wahl is a filmmaker and artist whose work has been screened internationally at film festivals such as CPH:DOX, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma and Open City Docs, in art galleries and museums like Centre Pompidou Metz, Royal Museums Greenwich and the Whitworth, as well as in universities like NYU, documentary art centres like Union Docs, and by sea onboard an engineless Thames sailing barge touring the South East coast of England.

He has won several international awards with his films, and they've featured in publications like The Guardian, Sight and Sound, and The Wire, and received funding from organisations such as Arts Council England, The Henry Moore Foundation, and the Royal Photographic Society.

His writing has been published in magazines, academic journals and books. He has also curated film programmes, been part of international film festival juries, taught film & photography courses in university and community settings in the UK and abroad, and worked as an AHRC funded research associate for the University of Manchester.

Currently, Wahl is the inaugural artist in residence at Instituto 17 (https://17edu.org/), an institute of critical studies in Mexico City, and a Visiting Research Associate at the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, at the University of Manchester (https://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/cidral/about/research-associates-and-postdoctoral-researchers/).

Wind, Tide & Oar - a film about the art of engineless sailing - is distributed by Tull Stories, and is currently streaming online in the UK and Ireland. (https://www.windtideandoar.com/online)

www.hctwahl.com (https://hctwahl.com/castor.html) | @hctwahl (https://www.instagram.com/hctwahl/)

Dr Jenna Ashton is a Senior Lecturer in Heritage Studies at the University of Manchester and a researcher specialising in heritage, environmental justice, climate change, and community-based creative practice. Her work explores how people build relationships with place through culture, storytelling, and collective practices. She has led and contributed to a range of interdisciplinary research projects connecting arts, heritage, ecology, and public engagement, and is co-collaborator on the UKRI-funded Treescapes project that informed For What We Have To Do (2025).

About the venue

The Whitworth is an accessible venue with facilities to support you during your visit, and alongside this our visitor team will be on hand to assist you in the gallery. Find out more about planning your visit (https://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/visit/planyourvisit/) to the Whitworth and accessibility information (https://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/visit/planyourvisit/access/) for you. If you’d like to speak to a team member about any access or additional needs, please get in touch with the gallery and we will be happy to assist you. Contact: whitworth@manchester.ac.uk or telephone: 0161 275 7450.

The Whitworth

The Whitworth art gallery and gardens is driven by a mission to work with communities to use art for positive social change, and actively addresses what matters most in people’s lives. We are proudly part of The University of Manchester, operating as a convening space between the University and the people of the city.

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