From boat-building to berries, from knitting socks to mending nets, Towards an Encyclopedia of Local Knowledge vividly presents the rich, place-based knowings and doings of more than one hundred knowledge-holders from rural Newfoundland. Renowned artist Pam Hall perfectly marries her singular artistic vision and her exhaustive community-based research in a stunning celebration and preservation of rural knowledge. These images and texts come together to reveal and revalue the local in a time when global monoculture seems overwhelming.

Pam Hall’s work in rural locations in Newfoundland and elsewhere has been ongoing since the late 1980s. Drawn deeply to place and to the labour of practice (and the practice of labour), she has worked with and around rural knowledge-holders, especially in the fisheries, for many years. Her parallel interests in the body, especially the female body, have also provided sites for her exploration of what knowledge might be, who “makes” it and who has the power to “name” it as knowledge and thus provide the basis for its value. Her work as an artist and a scholar has always been interdisciplinary, often been collaborative, and relies on and reveals a deep and profound attachment to this island and those who have invited her to make it her home for almost fifty years.

Pam Hall's profile page

“The work is informative, illuminating, testimonial and preservative. This encyclopedia is as one-of-a-kind as the knowledge it holds between its blue covers.”

The Telegram

"…a stunning book honouring the people of rural Newfoundland and their wide-ranging expertise."

Atlantic Books Today