Art and adders

The Adders Up project includes an arts programme designed to inspire audiences by the beauty and wonder of the world of adders.

Community arts grant bursary opportunities 2025-2026

We are pleased to announce that the community arts grant bursary opportunities 2025-2026 are now open for applications. This year, the North Pennines National Landscape’s Adders Up project is offering two commission bursary opportunities and one micro-bursary opportunity for artists working in the North Pennines. The community arts grants are funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Northumbrian Water Branch Out Fund.

We are interested in visual and performing arts and produced work that exists physically or digitally. Final outputs could be installed work, published work, film, animation, performance or events. We encourage animators and filmmakers to apply. The closing date for applications is Friday, 12th September 2025, 4pm.

For information on how to apply for these opportunities, please visit:

Arts commission bursary opportunity 2025-26 and arts commission bursary decision matrix 2025-26

Micro-bursary opportunity 2025-26 and micro-bursary decision matrix 2025-26

Community arts grant bursary opportunities 2024 – 2025

The North Pennines National Landscape’s Adders Up project offered four community arts grant bursaries for artists working in the North Pennines National Landscape in 2024 to 2025, one commission bursary and three micro-bursaries. The community arts grants are funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Northumbrian Water Branch Out Fund.

Adders Up commission bursary

The commission bursary supports an artist to engage with communities and schools in the North Pennines through arts activities while responding to the priorities of the Adders Up project, and was awarded to Jessica Cooper for the 2024-2025 arts programme.

Jessica is a potter and ceramics teacher working in Alston, Cumbria, making tableware and home goods. Her work references the natural world and incorporates local clay and glaze materials from the moor. As part of the commission bursary, she is currently working with several primary schools and community groups to to create a series of collaboratively made and decorated coil pots that explore the serpentine through the lens of landscape and ancient pottery. Through this bursary there will be a suite of six to 12 substantial sized pots for display at the ‘Adder’ exhibition to be held in spring 2026. She will be working in red earthenware clay, with local slips and traditional slipware glazes to tell the story of adders in this landscape and our hopes for their continued future.

Adders Up micro-bursaries

The three micro-bursaries, for artists living or working in the North Pennines National Landscape with the primary focus on developing their creative practice through the priorities of the Adders Up project, were awarded to Anna Osborne, Dan Walls and Caroline Steven.

Anna Osborne is a felting artist that lives and works in the North Pennines National Landscape. Felting has been her creative outlet for many years, but it wasn’t until 2019 and the arrival of a dog in the house, that she began to think of it as anything other than a hobby. The need to find a solution to the problem of ‘unfound’ tennis balls, drove her to experiment with humble and amply available local wool. It took many trials but she eventually created a felted, durable alternative to tennis balls which led her to ask the question: what else I could achieve with similar techniques? Being inspired by the natural local environment, she began making larger felted ‘rocks’ and ‘geodes’ as well as 2D art. Problem solving and experimentation continue to fuel this exploration. Anna will explore a variety of felting techniques to capture the texture and pattern of the adder in a series of 2D pieces.

Dan Walls is an eclectic mixed-media artist. He primarily produces large-scale murals through his business, Illumination Wall Art, while also producing work of varying media to both challenge and express his interests. He is passionate about the natural world and has a fondness for our native animals and folklore. Having never seen an adder in the wild, he has only ever heard stories about these fascinating creatures and, as such, they hold a mythical quality to him. This micro-bursary will expand his knowledge of the adder and adder folklore and through creative exploration of various media on a series of panels.

Caroline Steven is a printmaker, born in Northumberland now living in the North Pennines. She expresses herself in an intuitive, experimental and abstract way which is deeply influenced by human emotions. With this bursary she is producing handmade prints (block and monotype) to be displayed in a long rectangular form, emulating the form of the snake. She is exploring mediums and the various mythologies surrounding snakes identifying seven themes that resonate. The final work will consist of images inspired by the serpentine, exploring the colours, patterns, textures and forms of the snake as it appears throughout mythology.