Fellfoot Forward scheme arts 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, 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”.

ENDS

Notes for editiors

About The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Using money raised by the National Lottery, we Inspire, lead and resource the UK’s heritage to create positive and lasting change for people and communities, now and in the future. www.heritagefund.org.uk. Since The National Lottery began in 1994, National Lottery players have raised over £43 billion for projects and more than 635,000 grants have been awarded across the UK. More than £30 million raised each week goes to good causes across the UK.

Fellfoot Forward Landscape Partnership Scheme. Led by the North Pennines AONB Partnership, the Fellfoot Forward LPS is a major project to conserve, enhance and celebrate the natural and cultural heritage of a special part of the North West of England, which stretches from the Cumbrian fellside of the North Pennines AONB and UNESCO Global Geopark to the River Eden, and runs north from Melmerby to Hallbankgate. Fellfoot Forward will bring together management and restoration of habitats, such as woodland, peatland and grasslands, with community archaeology, conservation of historic buildings, community arts and education, and is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. For more information about the Fellfoot Forward Landscape Partnership scheme visit https://northpennines.org.uk/what_we_do/fellfoot-forward/

For media enquiries about the Fellfoot Forward LPS contact Kate Stacey at North Pennines AONB Partnership – katestacey@northpenninesaonb.org.uk, Phone: 07970020648