The Fellfoot Forward Landscape Partnership Scheme, led by the North Pennines AONB Partnership and funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, has awarded six artists, who live or will work in the Fellfoot Forward scheme area, with micro bursaries.
The bursaries will run from May to October 2022 and are intended to support artists and producers to develop the next steps with their practice, skills, knowledge, or a new idea. The activities that the bursary could fund include mentoring, site visits, short experiments, research, as well as thinking and development time. This bursary programme will support future artistic practice that responds to the natural and social Fellfoot Forward landscapes.
The successful artists are:
Ruth Wharton, a visual artist, local to the Fellfoot Forward area, whose practice relates to the North Pennine landscape, and particularly the evidence of mining. She has a local farming and mining background – her grandfather ran two barite mines and employed Nenthead men. The bursary will fund two days of specialist photo etching tuition in Copenhagen, enabling Ruth to introduce photography and text into her practice. Her artistic development will be enhanced by a deeper understanding of UV processes in printmaking and by increased research experience. It will also contribute to the costs of research within the North Pennines AONB communities and landscape.
Heather Turner, a visual artist who has previously worked as a psychologist, coach, and facilitator. Her emerging practice is inspired by Fernand Deligny’s Wander Lines drawings, made over a ten year period in the sixties and seventies by tracking the movements of austistic children. She is also influenced by Richard Long, a British sculptor, land, and conceptual artist, and Martin Pirong, an artist whose wander line drawings are created using GPS technology. Heather will work with a community local to the stone circle, Long Meg and her Daughters, to research and develop the wander lines of the site and create a subsequent artwork with participants.
Mark Gibbs, a professional fine artist who also works in arts education, currently as Arts Co-ordinator at Carlisle Youth Zone. He creates intricate animal sculptures and evocative paintings which celebrate the Pennines and its wildlife. He is interested in animals on their own terms and what they reveal about our relationship with the natural world, with a particular interest in the issues around moorland bird conservation. The bursary will fund Mark’s research and development to make hybrid curlew sculptures, combining ceramics and paper, and working with ceramist Dave Norman in Castle Carrock.
Nicola Colclough whose work focuses on nature connection who incorporates her training as a Shinrin Yoku (forest bathing) leader into her practice. The bursary will support a residency in the Fellfoot Forward area during which Nicola will observe and record people who ’touch’ the land, finding out about their experience and what it means to have this direct relationship with nature. She will develop her knowledge of how people work with the land, including the skills, techniques, and knowledge that are overlooked or at risk of being lost, and also explore if there are ways of touching, holding, and feeling nature that can be incorporated into forest bathing activities.
Alex Farines, a Brazilian born neuro-divergent creative practitioner living in Penrith. His practice involves developing strategies of performance art as a means of engagement with embedded issues of social trauma within selected contexts (e.g. lived experiences of mental health and poverty). The bursary will enable Alex to devise and test a small series of creative tasks, indoors and out in the North Pennines, as well as individually and in a group. He aims to work with a local peer support group, whose members share a difficult mental journey in life, addressing loneliness and improving well-being by ways of visual creativity and arts.
Coralie Martlew, an early career portrait artist specialising in pet and people portraits in graphite pencil, based in Lazonby, Penrith. The bursary will support her professional development, particularly in people portraiture. A self-taught artist, she will use the bursary to enrol on a tutored portrait drawing course and further her practice, including sharing her skills with local communities.
Fiona Knox, Fellfoot Forward LPS scheme manager, said: “Now that we are through the awarding and commissioning process, we have six fantastic artists, at different stages of their practice, who will benefit from the bursary funding to develop their techniques as well as their approach to community work across the Fellfoot Forward scheme area”.
Fellfoot Forward artist commissions for 2022 – Everything Changes, Everything Stays The Same
The Fellfoot Forward Landscape Partnership Scheme, led by the North Pennines AONB Partnership and funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, has commissioned three artist projects, which will be delivered from May to autumn 2022. ‘Everything Changes, Everything Stays the Same’ will respond artistically to one, or more, of three Fellfoot Forward LPS priorities – A place in time, Shifting natural worlds, and Look up.
1. A Place in Time
The majority of the five thousand plus Fellfoot Forward inhabitants live in the villages scattered around the scheme area. Each village’s unique social story spans centuries and millennia. The Fellfoot Forward scheme aims to enhance engagement between village communities, connecting residents across boundary lines, and sharing the stories, hopes, and fears of residents about change and constancy in village life.
Lithophones in the Landscape, by Stephen Burke and Bluejam Arts, will involve children and young people across Castle Carrock & Armathwaite exploring and performing the musical geologies of the places they live. What does my village sound like? What do different villages sound like when performed together? Can I perform the ground beneath my feet and the stones in the walls of my home?Rocks and stones will serve as instruments and clues, inspiring deeper understanding of their landscape.
2. Shifting Natural Worlds
The Fellfoot Forward landscape is very rural with a diverse geology lying beneath a unique range of habitats and wildlife. Climate crisis is already disrupting seasonal ecological cycles, leading to habitat loss, degradation, and a reduction in biodiversity. The scheme’s arts programme offers a way to spark a greater sense of local ownership, responsibility, and action to build connections between residents and their shifting natural environment.
Crossing Thresholds, by Dominic Smith (main picture), will take an ‘out in the field approach’ and support participants to create visual, written, and sonic narratives that playfully explore their landscape and how it has changed through time. Dominic will work with communities across the northern part of the Fellfoot Forward scheme area, primarily Hallbankgate, leading creative activities that look at how we approach thresholds, starting with the thresholds in our surrounding natural environment. It will involve walking workshops, recording interactions with the landscape using materials such as light sensitive paper (Cyanotypes), creative note taking, sound recording, and the use of magnetic audio material. Participants will co-produce artworks that are exhibited in the landscape and published online.
3. Look Up
The North Pennines is the darkest mainland Area of Outstanding Natural and one of the darkest places in England. The Fellfoot Forward arts activity will support communities to build a curiosity with the night skies and stargazing and increase their sense of connection between life lived in the area and the wider universe.
Our Dark Hearts, by The Curious School, will support communities across the southern part of the Fellfoot Forward scheme to creatively explore the area’s night sky through time. What was the sensory experience at night for the Border Reivers? How do horses behave after dark? How do the stars above connect us to future generations and the wider universe? How was moonlight and starlight experienced before light pollution?
Working with a range of multi-generational communities and experts – from farming and horse-riding communities to Langwathby CofE School to astronomers at Durham University, they will inspire residents with experiences of their landscape when the sun is down. Using exploratory workshops and night walks combining visual arts, creative writing, and digital arts, residents will be creatively document nocturnal experiences and memories, and the resulting co-created artworks will be installed through the landscape and published online.
Fellfoot Forward LPS scheme manager, Fiona Know, said: “It has been a real eye opener working with the many local and regional artists that have put in bids for the North Pennines AONB Partnership 2022 arts commissions, as part of the Fellfoot Forward scheme. Our three new artist commissions, which build on last year’s community arts pilots, will bring to a chance to take a fresh look, and engage in new ways, with this part of Cumbria to communities. They will have the opportunity to experience art in the dark, release the sounds and songs from the rocks beneath our feet, and view our changing ways and landscape as a captured point in time. We hope that taking part in the arts programme or receiving the many and varied results of the communities’ work, will bring closer engagement with this landscape and its people”.
