Limestone Journeys Year 2

Limestone Journeys Year 2

Limestone Journeys Junction Arts is one of the nine partners in The Derbyshire Magnesian Limestone Landscape ‘Limestone Journeys’ project, an exciting Heritage Lottery Funded (HLF) scheme, led by Creswell Heritage Trust. This Landscape Partnership grant brings £2.9 million into the scheme area. Junction Arts has been a major contributor in this bid. Limestone Journeys Year 2 Junction Arts Project Co-ordinator: Aly Stoneman Junction Arts will be running 11 projects during 2012 as part of The Derbyshire Magnesian Limestone Landscape ‘Limestone Journeys’ project. Our creative projects are designed to bring new skills and individuality to our participants, taking place in schools, colleges, local communities, and with the general public. There are also commissioned artworks designed for site-specific installation and performance. Some of the Year 2 projects will be progressed from Year 1. The Year 2 Celebration Event for Limestone Journeys is The Festival of the Outdoors on Saturday October 28 2012 at Hardwick Hall. Here is a brief synopsis of the projects being delivered by Junction Arts in Year 2: First Light: A series of workshops in a school, leading to the creation of a large scale time-line map to provide an educational resource on the chronological and geographical aspects of the local magnesium landscape that can be used by school children. Science and art will come together in a stimulating process with an emphasis on climate and natural intervention. The project is designed to extend knowledge about the origins of the landscape. Triple Echo: A commissioned artist will create a site-specific stone artwork to reflect and enhance the landscape, using local materials. Open studio access will be organised for schools/consultation groups to see the progress of the project at Hardwick Stone Centre. The sculpture will be located in the grounds of Hardwick Hall. Drawing the Way: An introduction into how maps provide information from the past to the present. A particular emphasis will be placed on how we use maps to understand the evolution and changing state of the landscape and its contours. Research will include visits to specific sites to provide physical references. Beneath The Surface: Commissioned film documentary showcasing the growth and decline of the local industries of quarrying and mining. Research and engagement with community members will help to create a legacy from local people with reference to the industrial past. The Listening - Limestone Songs: People from the local community will be invited to form a choir and with the expertise of a composer/choir leader will engage in a series of workshops to create a new song celebrating the area. The materials will reference the delicate nature of the land and how intervention, if not managed carefully, will make it a more fragile place. The Whispering Gallery: A participatory event for The Festival of the Outdoors celebration day on October 28 at Hardwick Hall. The general public who are visiting the festival can engage with the project by recording their personal journey through the landscape to the site. The recordings will be installed in the Listening Posts at Hardwick Hall in Autumn/Winter 2012. Make It, Mend It: An extensive ongoing programme of teaching heritage crafts and skills to members of the community. Led by professional crafts people, this project is designed to bring a response to the sustainability of the landscape through traditional skills and responsibilities, enabling local people to learn new skills relating directly to the environment. Custodians: Lecture Walk/Tour - A Specialist will lead this introduction to the Magnesium Limestone area, starting at Creswell Crags and including several key sites of interest. Addressing concerns over environmental landscape management and focusing on local involvement and ownership in the future, this project aims to help create a new awareness of the local landscape and its fragility in these times of global warming. In partnership with Creswell Heritage Trust. From Cave to Castle: Photography workshops in specific heritage sites of the areas including mills, workers cottages & farmhouses. Students from Chesterfield College School of Art and Design will work with a professional photographer to encourage and extend the vision of the Limestone Journeys project and potentially link with Creswell Heritage Trust’s ‘Your Hidden Heritage’ project, involving local people surveying vernacular structures in the area. Strands: A Celebration of a lost local industry and the skills supporting it. An artist will be commissioned to research and reference the now closed local textile industries of the area and run a series of workshops in the community with an emphasis on textiles or a local craft skill. This project is a practical, visual arts project using knitting skills to showcase how a basic craft can be used to transfer skills and creativity within the community. This project will offer an opportunity for local people to become community leaders for skill sharing events. Traces: A professional writer/artist will run a series of workshops in schools with a ‘radio link’ designed to create imaginary radio broadcasts with reference to the Ice Age and present day, using stories to describe events or forecasts. Designed for schools in rural or hard to reach communities, this project has an emphasis on communication and investigating the local landscape and history, providing the opportunity for two schools – one from Derbyshire and one from another Magnesian Limestone region in the UK - to build a new relationship which has a strong reference to the special landscapes in which they live. The students will create imaginative work to be broadcast or skyped between the schools.

Giant Wings

Giant Wings

STRATA POEM: GIANT WINGS

Working with project coordinator Rebecca Clay from Creswell Heritage Trust, Junction Arts delivered a response project to build a giant illuminated dragonfly lantern to help promote an exhibition featuring The Bolsover Dragonfly, a 300 million-year-old fossil found in a coal mine in Bolsover during the 1970's, which will be exhibited at Creswell Crags from 30th March 2012. Following a successful Arts Council England GfA funding bid by Cresswell Heritage Trust, Junction Arts engaged willow artist Liz Sparks to work with sixty Year 4 and 5 pupils from Bolsover Junior School to create the Dragonfly Lantern during workshops on the 7th and 8th February 2012. Rebecca Clay introduced each session with a powerpoint presentation about the Bolsover Dragonfly fossil, explaining how it was discovered locally by coal miners and describing the geology of the area. The pupils were instructed in elements of 3D construction, drawing and design skills by Liz Sparks, using willow and tissue paper to construct the Dragonfly sculpture. Aly Stoneman from Junction Arts also ran writing workshops with pupils alongside the design workshops, using examples of fossils found locally in different layers of strata to generate written responses and poems. These were later transcribed onto acetate and layers of mounting board and coloured card to be exhibited as strata poems at Creswell Crags and Nottingham Light Night.

The completed dragonfly lantern was displayed to the entire school in assembly on the final day. The giant lantern was subsequently exhibited at Nottingham Light Night on February 10th 2012 where the dragonfly accompanied the Creswell Heritage Trust information stand on top of the hill in Nottingham Castle gardens and so was visible from the entrance and many other points in the grounds to the 9000 people who visited the Castle grounds that evening. The Dragonfly Lantern, drawings, photos and the strata poems produced at Bolsover Junior School will be exhibited at Creswell Crags during the schools exhibition from July until September 2012. Fifteen pupils from Bolsover Junior School will also be attending the VIP launch at Creswell Crags in March and reading their poems at the event.

Old School

Old School

Old School is a creative project involving pupils and staff in the creation of an archive and contemporary record of the current Shirebrook Academy (currently a new school is being built, due to open Easter 2013). This is a pilot being developed with Shirebrook Academy and Stubbin Wood Special School. A small team of young people from each school will work together to collect oral histories from pupils, teaching and support staff from the past and present day and the wider community. The stories will form an exhibition, together with portrait photographs of the interviewees and be shown in the old and new schools and other cultural venues. We will encourage both schools to use the information collected as a teaching resource to aid the curriculum. “This project will be shared with Stubbin Woods partner school in China and we are also investigating opportunities for a ‘Project Exchange’, delivery of the project in the Chinese School.” Jane Wells Junction Arts Old School project co-ordinator. Seb Coe, Chair of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games said: “ The Inspire programme is ensuring the legacy of the 2012 Games starts now as projects like Old School are enabling people in the Bolsover District to make positive life changes.”

Combine: Farming Heritage | East Midlands

Combine: Farming Heritage | East Midlands

After a successful grant application to the Heritage Lottery Fund Junction Arts will begin delivery in January of Combine (more...)

Bright Winter Nights

Bright Winter Nights

"Something stirs beneath the ground, a glowing beast of light and sound, (more...)

make: CREATE

make: CREATE

Photographs taken by participants of one of the make: CREATE workshops (more...)

Rural Living

Rural Living

See pictures here of the first Junction Arts project under the Rural Living programme. (more...)

Sidelinez

Sidelinez

Sidelinez is a fantastic project that brings sports teams, artists and (more...)