Community arts exploring the lead and silver mining heritage of the North Pennines

The Land of Lead and Silver project focuses on the lead and silver mining and processing of the North Pennines and aims to develop new audiences to this mining heritage across the whole of the National Landscape area. The artist-in-residence and three art bursaries for 2025 have been announced. The artists will offer workshops across the North Pennines National Landscape to take a new and exciting look at the lead and silver mining heritage of the area and engage people with the industrial heritage in creative and accessible ways.

Artist-in-residence, Jenny Brook

Jenny Brook is a textile artist, creative practitioner and art educator based in the Eden Valley in Cumbria, who creates unique pieces using vintage and worn fabrics. She has been appointed artist-in-residence and will use her work, which is rooted in storytelling, to bring people’s stories relating to the lead and silver mining heritage of the North Pennines to life. Jenny likes to observe the everyday and translate it, along with each scrap of vintage fabric with its own history, into stitch. She also has a passion for puppetry and combines textiles and puppetry to create immersive storytelling experiences.

Artist bursaries

Amanda Drago graduated from Northern School of Contemporary Dance, Leeds and has had a varied career performing, teaching, choreographing and producing dance in the north east. An experienced teacher, she enjoys engaging people of all ages and abilities in arts, cultural and wellbeing activities. During the bursary, Amanda will deliver six sessions of folk song and seated dance workshops with Alston Ladies Social Group, supported by choir leader Lindsay Hannon and musician Kit Haigh. Using traditional songs from the lead mining communities, the sessions will explore the mining heritage of the North Pennines through song and accessible dance.

The Knotted Project uses theatre and creativity to inspire and engage young people and their communities. They will use their bursary to start an inspiring intergenerational project, working with people of mixed ages across the North Pennines to remember stories of the past and celebrate the rich mining history of the region. These stories will be brought to life through theatre, working with creative young people to bring a fresh energy and perspective to the incredible stories of the past, and connecting local audiences to their history in a new way.

Robin Webb is an animation artist based in the north east of England who has been creating animated films with communities, schools and institutes for almost 25 years. He co-creates films by people of all abilities and all ages using animation as a tool for learning, entertainment and self-expression. For his bursary, he will explore the full spectrum of the mining story in the North Pennines region from the very minuscule building blocks of the actual minerals found in the ground up to the impact mining has had on people and the landscape. Through workshops using a variety of animation techniques, participants will create an educational film that will be fun to make, film, photograph, record and animate.

Details of the artists’ workshops will be available soon.