What do young people do in their free time? Do they engage with arts and culture? If the answer is yes, then how and why do they do this? If no, then what’s stopping them?

MPA are helping Curious Minds find out the answers to these and other questions as part of a miniature action research project.

The first two sessions took place at The Hollin’s Technology College, Accrington last week. The young people considered their level of engagement with arts and culture before choosing ‘interventions’ to make and reflect on. They chose to engage with digital media and theatre.

So  a few days later, Matt Gartside from Zumamedia joined the group in school to give them his digital photography top tips. What do you think of the results?

Next week we’re off to the Lowry Centre to see some musical theatre!

The route of the trail came easily.  I wanted to take the participant on a journey through time and so the Weavers’ Triangle Visitor Centre was an ideal and easily located starting point. Sandygate Square forms a focal point of the area’s regeneration and has been the location of recent events and performances.  This was a logical end point to bring the story up-to-date and look into the future.  Between these two points the canal and Trafalgar Street offered opportunities to tell the story of the canal, mills and the people who worked in them.

Once I’d worked out the route and identified the key locations along it, I could then source the archive material to create image slideshows, videos and sound bites which would play when the user reached points of interest along the route.  The internet has put information at our fingertips but there really is no better way of spending an afternoon than exploring what our local libraries have to offer.  Burnley Library was a fantastic resource and an essential source of the many archive images I used within the app.

To create part of the audio soundtrack I recorded local dialect poet Mervyn Hadfield reciting some of his stories.  Five minutes of recording were followed by a most enjoyable couple of hours reminiscing about our respective childhoods growing up among the cobbled terraced streets of Burnley and Rochdale and our parents’ working lives in the cotton mills.  Common experiences separated by thirty years, but a world that has now largely disappeared.

A trip to the North West Sound Archive at Clitheroe Museum (where reel-to-reel tapes and C60 cassettes still exist!) filled the gaps with oral histories of mill workers and bargemen, which they were happy to exchange for my recordings of Mervyn’s memories.

It has been interesting to see how people have reacted differently to the various forms of media.  Contrasting how a location looks now, compared with archive images showing the same place in the past, always seems to delight the user.   My own favourite is a hole in the wall alongside the canal.  If you look through it in the real world a patch of derelict scrubland is revealed.   Looking through the hole using the app reveals something completely different, a journey back in time to what was there before and how it sounded.  You’ll have to find out for yourself what that was though!

Without wanting to sound too deep and analytical, the project does feel like a coming together of many strands of my life – my family’s connections to the cotton industry; the History degree I thought I’d never use directly; a career of over twenty years in software development; more recent experience as a trail writer; and reacquainting myself with a town I’d not really visited since my dad used to take me to the Turf in the days when Burnley actually had a good football team.   If this was a reality TV program I’d probably say that I’d been “on a personal journey”.

So the app is now out there, available on the iStore and Android markets.  A lifetime’s ambition has been accomplished.  Published, at last!

ABOUT TREASURE TRAILS

Treasure Trails devise Trails that inform, entertain and educate people in inspiring ways.  Our Trails capture the imagination, often using game thinking and game mechanics to engage users with their environment.  We now develop location-aware apps for smart phones which provide exciting opportunities to create media-rich trails, guides, stories – and of course puzzles, games and treasure hunts – using a mix of audio, video, text and images to immerse the visitor in their location.  Our company has produced outstanding tailor made Trails for major organisations such as the BBC, National Trust, the Woodland Trust, and many more.

It started with a Tweet.  I can’t remember exactly what I was tweeting about but it elicited an immediate response from @teamMPA.  “Intrigued!  I think we should talk”.  Within the week I was at Mid Pennine Arts’ offices in Burnley meeting with Business Director Rob Carder to explain all about our interactive trails and to discuss ways in which we might possibly work together.  It soon became apparent to both of us that there was an obvious synergy between MPA’s  ‘Art + People + Places’ formula and Treasure Trails’ aim of connecting people with the local environment, ‘The Fun Way to Explore’.

It was when Treasure Trails began to develop location-aware apps for smart phones that the real opportunities became more apparent.  Now the trails could not only be used to link works of art but themselves become a new medium for their interpretation – using audio, video and images, all triggered by GPS – to engage, inform and enhance the visitor experience in a way that could not easily be achieved with more traditional paper-based trails.

We decided that the                                                                                                            Weavers’ Triangle area in Burnley should be the subject of our first joint collaboration.  This area, once at the heart of Burnley’s textile industry, has been the focus of regeneration plans by Burnley Council for some time and MPA have been actively involved in this process.  One of their recent projects, Project Pride Burnley, had brought the area to life with a piece of promenade theatre within the old mills.  The outcomes from this project would be used as the basis for the app.

Soon a steady flow of information arrived electronically and through my letterbox.  A documentary of Project Pride, videos of Dark Satanics and a plethora of images.  Stories of Sandygate, a recent creative writing project that captured local peoples’ memories and stories of the area was also included.  I followed this up with research into the history of the area via the internet and visits to the site.  I always knew a History degree would come in useful one day!

Watch out next week for the second part of this fantastic account of Stuart’s journey to producing the Weavers Triangle app.

If you can’t wait for the second part of this instalment to view the app, you can download it now for FREE from Android or itunes .

Don’t time fly!  I hadn’t realised quite how swiftly, until the Christmas card from the Chief Exec of Burnley Council brought it to mind.

The official municipal card was exploiting a suitably seasonal photo of the Tree in its Siberian winter setting, with a pile of presents sketched in around the base.  This playful bit of graffiti might have been tailor-made to offend the impeccably minimalist design sensibilities of its creators, the inspired architect duo Tonkin Liu, but at MPA we are still inclined to be delighted whenever a Panopticon gets a bit of extra exposure.

Reflecting fondly on how often that happens with this particular, much-loved landmark, I suddenly realised that the fifth birthday of the Singing Ringing Tree had slipped past in December without us noticing.  Damn!  We should have been celebrating…

The Singing Ringing Tree was the third of the Panopticons series to be commissioned and built, in a very productive partnership with Burnley Borough Council.  It was unveiled in December 2006, with two coachloads of special guests ferried up to the site and bent nearly double to keep their feet in the face of the howling gales.  Back in the car park at Crown Point, the big executive coaches were rocking side to side as if about to capsize.  But this delicate little landmark survived its crazy launch day, and has not looked back since.

You can catch the wind-buffeted flavour of that day, and the story of the construction of the Tree as a ‘giant Meccano set’ , in Roger Appleton’s film of the project:

http://vimeo.com/13093620

The Panopticons project  was intended to encourage folk to use the landscape on their doorsteps, to discover spectacular new views of Pennine Lancashire, and to explore further the rugged splendours of our area.  More than this, it was designed to create positive images to project out into the wider world, and transform perceptions about our locale.

The Singing Ringing Tree has delivered on all of this, with knobs on.  Burnley Council and people promoting Pennine Lancashire both make fulsome use of this very photogenic icon in all their promotional stuff.  http://www.regeneratepl.co.uk/pennine-lancashire-location/about-the-region/.  Images of the Tree have whizzed around the world.  Millions of YouTube users have viewed viral videos of the Tree and its song.

And this momentum is not slowing down.  In 2011 we’ve had features of the Panopticons on two network TV shows – a lovely feature on Flog It! and another on Country Tracks.  The Tree has featured in audio and image in the Berlin fashion mag Sleek and its covermount CD.  And the new edition of our local OS map – guess what it has on the cover!

This is the gift that keeps on giving.  And what a gift it was.  By happy coincidence, that launch day in December 2006 was also the 80^th birthday of the Tree’s first benefactor, Sir Simon Towneley, who had identified the site, donated use of it, and worked tirelessly to help us locate the extra funds we needed.  He also recruited our second benefactor, his son Peregrine Towneley, whose immensely generous contribution made it possible for us to balance the books and to complete this dream of a project.

So happy 85^th birthday Sir Simon, thanks again Peregrine, and here’s to the next half decade.

http://www.midpenninearts.org.uk/panopticons

More information for planning your visit at:

http://www.visitlancashire.com/things-to-do/search/panopticons-p96590

by Claire Morgan

Mid Pennine Arts and Lancashire County Museum Service are delighted to announce the latest Contemporary Heritage commission has been awarded to international sculptor Claire Morgan.

No Match will have its official opening at a free public event on Saturday 18 February 2012 at Helmshore Mills Textile Museum, Rossendale, Lancashire.

Following on from a research residency at Helmshore Mills Textile Museum in October, Claire Morgan will create a six part, site specific, sculptural installation at the museum in January.

Inspired by the mill and her discoveries during the residency, what Claire has found most intriguing is the mill workers fond memories despite the daily hazards they faced. The installation will be suspended in the Devil Hole where man’s attempt to harness natures’ power was realised through intense heat, noise, pressure and sometimes even smoke, fire and blood.

“My idea for No Match came from my fascination with all the complex, repetitive, and really quite aggressive processes that occurred in the Devil Hole.  I wanted to make something that traced the passage of nature through that dark, industrial space, and for me that could mean anything from the cotton, to workers, to fire, or even blood.  The finished installation will hopefully acknowledge these things in an abstract but engaging way.” Claire Morgan

No Match is part of Contemporary Heritage: A new way of seeing, Mid Pennine Arts’ ambitious partnership programme of contemporary art commissions at some of Lancashire’s most colourful and intriguing historic venues.  The commissions, inspired by Lancashire’s heritage, animate each site and offer visitors a rare chance to experience major works of art by artists of national and international standing outside urban areas.

No Match launches at 1pm on Saturday 18 February 2012 at Helmshore Mills Textile Museum, Rossendale, Lancashire, BB4 4NP. FREE EVENT.

No Match is supported by Modern History which is a European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), funded marketing programme which promotes the industrial heritage of the North West in a contemporary and compelling way making it relevant to today’s visitor.

Mid Pennine Arts
Lancashire, UK
March 2012

Mid Pennine Arts are currently looking for case studies to feature in a celebratory event we are planning to mark the conclusion of the REMADE regeneration programme.

This will be a conference event in which we aim to bring together delegates from the arts sector and those who work in public realm, landscape, education and policy contexts. The aim is to share the success of the Remade programme but also to contextualise it with inspiring case studies from across the UK and beyond. In particular we want to attract speakers to talk about projects around the themes of:

• connecting people with landscape
• imaginative and creative new use of landscape
• re-use of derelict land

The event will take place on Thursday 29th March 2012 at Brockholes Nature Reserve.

Those wishing to present papers are encouraged to forward a 300-500 word abstract to Lucy Green lucy@midpenninearts.org.uk

Deadline for abstracts:  30 January 2012

1. Clitheroe

Clitheroe is great day out not only does it offer a large variety of unique and boutique shops there is also a fantastic selection of cafés, bars and restaurants to enjoy that well earned afternoon tea! There are many walks that begin in Clitheroe which you can find out more about here.

You will also find in Clitheroe, the Platform Gallery which provides a unique market place for handmade crafts from across the UK.  You can visit the craft exhibitions, buy stunning gifts in the Craft Shop or take part in workshops and educational opportunities.  For further information and opening times visit the website here.

Clitheroe Castle Keep is also host to TAKEN, a sound installation by contemporary classical composer Ailís Ní Ríain. Inspired by the story of the Lancashire witches, TAKEN allows the visitor to imagine how the 12 individuals may have felt during their last four months in captivity whilst awaiting trial. December is an excellent time to visit with the cold, windy, icy weather adding to the experience.  Find out more about TAKEN here and on our blog.

2. Panopticons

Have you visited the Panopticons yet? Designed to attract visitors into the countryside to enjoy the stunning landscapes that this delightful area has to offer. There are four Panopticons altogether each situated on a high-point site commanding spectacular views.

Colourfields, in Blackburn’s Corporation Park, allows you to enjoy a panoramic view of the park below, with the town beyond and distant views out towards Lytham, Southport and Fleetwood.

Singing Ringing Tree is situated on Crown Point above Burnley, look north for a superb view of Pendle Hill or east for a glimpse of the Cliviger wind turbines on the Yorkshire border.

Atom, nestles on the hillside high above Wycoller village, there are breathtaking views of the Pendle landscape all around, including the historic settlement of Wycoller, now a conservation area.

Halo is the centrepiece of a former landfill site on Top o’ Slate above Haslingden. You can enjoy commanding views of the Rossendale Valley, Greater Manchester and into Hyndburn, Burnley and Ribble Valley.

For more information, visit http://www.visitlancashire.com/panopticons/. You can also download various maps and guides for walking around the Panopticons and other areas of interest here

3. The Greenway – Padiham & Preston

The Greenways are perfect for an afternoon walk or cycle with the family; constructed along disused railway lines they provide a safe, beautiful and alternative way to discover the countryside.

The Preston Greenway was constructed along the formally disused railway line that formed part of the Bamber Bridge to Preston extension of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. The greenway links Penwortham, Bamber Bridge and Preston City Centre and forms part of the National Cycle Network.

The Padiham Greenway was created on a disused railway line that runs between Rosegrove and Padiham in Burnley. The Padiham Greenway has been developed as part of a longer route between Great Harwood and Burnley which is designed to create an off-road trail that connects people to facilities and open spaces in and around the towns that flank the route.

4. Chapel Gallery, Ormskirk via Burscough.

The Chapel Gallery is situated in the lively town of Ormskirk. Their diverse programme brings some of the most inventive contemporary fine art and craft from across the UK to the region, while also supporting locally based artists in the development of their careers. There are plenty of activities to keep young minds absorbed and with an on site Café and Contemporary Craft Shop, the gallery is the perfect place to visit on a day out. Ormskirk itself offers a variety of shops and cafés and an afternoon can be easily spent wandering around the town.

On route to Ormskirk why not stop off in Burscough and visit Gallery on the Wharf, the new permanent home for the Art and Craft Guild of Lancashire. As 2011 marks the silver anniversary of the Guild, the gallery opening in February makes it an exciting year for everyone. There is a wide variety of work on offer including ceramics, furniture, textiles, jewellery, glass, art, photography and turned wood from original designs all displayed in the unique setting of Burscough Wharf. Visit the website for more information.

 5. Brockholes

Brockholes is a new kind of nature reserve, an unreserved reserve owned and managed by The Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside. There’s lots to see and do at Brockholes, you can hunt out the floating Visitor Village which houses a restaurant, shops and Welcome Centre or explore the family-friendly hides, walking trails and play area.  A fantastic free day out accessible by car and public transport. Visit the website for more information.

6. TATE Liverpool

See the Alice in Wonderland exhibition at Tate Liverpool till 29^th January. The first exhibition of its kind to explore how Lewis Carroll’s stories have influenced the visual arts, inspiring generations of artists. The exhibition will provide insight into the creation of the novels and the inspiration they have provided for artists through the decades. Alice in Wonderland  offers  visitors a rare opportunity to view Carroll’s own drawings and photographs, alongside Victorian Alice memorabilia and John Tenniel’s preliminary drawings for the first edition of the novel.

7. Museum of Lancashire

Find out the history of Preston’s Guild in 2012 with a visit to the recently refurbished Museum of Lancashire. They have a lot to offer and admission is completely free! Whether your interests lie in Preston or the wider heritage of Lancashire, the Museum of Lancashire gives you a great introduction to all things Lancashire. With displays, interactives and activities aimed at different ages, there really will be something for all of the family to enjoy. Why not top off your visit with a relaxing coffee and cake in our Gateway café.

8. Cedar Farm

Cedar Farm nestling in beautiful countryside is surprisingly situated just 15 minutes from junction 27 of the M6. Providing an inspirational and creative shopping experience, the wonderful array of unique shops, selling contemporary crafts, clothing, home furnishings and mystic gifts is complemented by a group of creative working artists; here visitors have an opportunity to purchase artwork made by some of the most talented people in the region.

The cafe@cedarfarm, serves delicious freshly prepared food and the Coffee Roastery are both award winning places to eat and drink.

With regular exhibitions, free parking, a children’s playground and farm animals to feed, it’s a perfect place to spend an hour or two. Although, if you want to spend longer, you can book onto one of the courses or have a pamper day at the beauty salon.

With opportunities to feed the variety of animals and drop in to Pots of Fun to paint a pot, in between coffee and cake and wander round the unique shops, Cedar Farm makes a great afternoon out for the family or adults alike.

 9. Valley of Stone.

The Valley of Stone is a project which celebrates the quarrying and stone working heritage of Rossendale.  From the late 18th century to the time of the First World War quarrying was a major industry in Rossendale, employing thousands of men. The Valley of Stone project tells the story of this great industry, conserves remains, provides a programme of guided walks featuring Rossendale’s stone working heritage and celebrates this heritage through a number of arts-based activities. You can read more about Mid Pennine Arts’ involvement and the sculptures we commissioned in Lee Quarry here.

Why not visit these sculptures and take the family and your bikes along for an active, cultural and historical day out all rolled into one!

10. BFG at the Dukes.

One of Roald Dahl’s most popular children’s stories, The BFG which follows the adventures of Sophie a little girl with a big heart and she’s going on a whizzpoppingly wonderful adventure this Christmas, as she meets the Big Friendly Giant and sets off on an unbelievable journey.  From her sleepy orphanage, to magical Dream Country and beyond, join Sophie in this brand new production promising excitement, just a touch of danger and larger than life characters. In a faithful adaptation of the classic story, The Dukes brings this heartwarming tale of friendship and bravery to the stage with amazing puppetry, masses of fun and plenty of surprises along the way.

Visit the Official Roald Dahl Website, which is packed with information and games as well as up to date news from the World of Roald Dahl.

The BFG is on till 7^th January. Why not make a day out of it and visit Lancaster home to the Storey Gallery and Gallery23

One of my many New Year resolutions is to organise more days out and actually do them – something I have been guilty of these last few years!

Please let us know if you visit any of the above and what you thought by leaving your comments below.

ENJOY!

Author: Rebecca Fitton

Interested in all things art related this was a priority for the weekend.  The trail consisted of 47 stops and although they were all in the same area, we opted to visit smaller clusters within the trail. Our first port of call was Fig run by six women who joined forces in 2010 to sell their own contemporary art and crafts.

Artemis, also a contemporary craft gallery, was the second stop a few doors up.  Housing an array of ceramics, jewellery, glassware and textiles it was hard not to buy anything especially with Christmas just around the corner.  Next door was an empty shop which had been papered with various thoughts and quotes by the artist, Pat Jamieson.

The black and white quotes stood out bold and strong against the orange paintwork.  The artist herself was kind enough to give us some the artwork she had prepared for her exhibition but hadn’t used.  At this point we were unaware that artwork would not be only thing we would be given that day.

Our trail continued to Horfield Baptist church, exhibiting work from five artists, an arts and crafts area for children and tea and cake. Although tempted to stop we pressed on and in doing so were offered a free slice of pizza by a girl from the Italian restaurant next door.

The next part of the trail took us into artists’ houses, where front rooms had been transformed into exhibition spaces, this was fascinating to see. The ability to just walk into strangers’ homes without knocking and be greeted by their fluffy cats, open fires and warm spiced apple juice was by far the most interesting part of the trail, not forgetting the artwork of course! The work on display ranged from prints and paintings to jewellery, ceramics and textiles – all unique in their homely settings.

Some work you could buy with some offering the facility to pay by card – these people were clearly not new to this set up! Three hours into the trail we had only managed about a fifth – it soon became clear that the whole weekend was required and most importantly an       early start!!

We decided to work our way back to car as we had afternoon tea booked at Lahloo Tea  in Clifton Village, a short car ride. Our journey back to the car was not disappointing though. A stonemason’s workshop housed a further exhibition mainly photography and of course stone carvings. Along the way to our final stop we passed a number of local food shops including a fishmongers who were selling the strangest item of ‘food to go’ you could ever buy on a street – Oysters! £1.20 bought you one oyster which you gulped down on the spot before heading on your way!

Our last stop took us round the back of a house to man’s shed that he had recently cleared out. The objects that he had left were bizarre to say the least and really gave you a feel for this man’s personality and hobbies. A little table was home to a selection of items that were free to a good home. I came away with some candles and my friend, a small notebook.

We then headed on our way to reflect on the last few hours over rosebud and smoky tea alongside our delicious and extremely filling afternoon tea goodies.

Author: Rebecca Fitton

You can find out more about the North Bristol Art Trail here. Have you ever visited the North Bristol Art Trail? If you know of anything similar that is more local, then please comment below.

This is like no other film or televised version of Emily Brontë’s novel!

The casting of a black actor is perfect in capturing the Heathcliff from the novel who is an outcast as soon as he arrives in Yorkshire.  Picked up in a Christian act of charity from the streets of Liverpool the young Heathcliff suffers immediately a brutal racist response from the members of the family he joins as a brother to Cathy and Hindley Earnshaw. Resented as an intruder, he is treated like one of the beasts on the small holding.

Yet; the boy Heathcliff and his ‘sister’ Cathy run wild together on the moorland which surrounds the house. There is clearly a love, a elemental passion exposed between the two of them as they feel at one with the wind, the rain, the heather and the very ground they pound together.  Their freedom of spirit is reflected in the high flying hen-harrier and the call of the lapwing across the wilderness of the peat moors.

This is no sentimental reading of the novel.  The reality of the savagery of nature is confronted head on. You see Heathcliff cut the throat of a sheep, break the neck of a rabbit, hang a dog by its collar…. This is no tourist board Yorkshire. It is a tough, unremitting landscape: cold, bleak, repeatedly drenched in heavy rain; you hear the mud of the sucking peat bogs. If you have ever walked over Black Hill or White Moss in rain on the Pennine Way you will know exactly what I mean. It is a landscape of terrible beauty. There is little to choose at times, between this family scraping a living on the land and the animals living amongst them. It is a story full of anger, pain and passion; possibly the most passionate love affair in literature.

Strangely there is little dialogue.  What there is, is sometimes heavy, clumsy. But the film is full of sound: the sound of the wind, of birds overhead, of rain, of squelching mud.  A huge emphasis is on images, images of the land, rocks, the movement of heather in the wind, peat bogs, beetles, birds and sky; a huge, huge sky.

The structure of the film is broken by the decision of the director to have different actors to play the young and older Cathy and Heathcliff. For me the transition is just a little too strong. But this is a film true to the spirit of the book – the first time I’ve seen a Heathcliff dig up Cathy from her grave!  A long way from Cliff Richard’s interpretation!!!!

Andrea Arnold gave an after show talk for a showing in Brighton.  “What was your inspiration for the film?” asked one film buff.

“I read the book….” answered Andrea.

“Where did you get the ideas of so much wind and rain?” asked another.

“From the book,” answered Andrea with saintly patience.

It’s an uncomfortable journey but a great film experience – you might even want to read the book again!

Author: David Smith

You can view a trailer for the film here

Have you seen Wuthering Heights or any other of Andrea Arnolds films?

Let us know your thoughts!

This new gateway will link with other recent improvements in the park to create an exciting entrance. It will also raise the profile of future developments within the park. Sculptor Michael Scheuermann has been commissioned by Mid Pennine Arts to redevelop the entrance. His design was chosen from a number of proposals submitted as it utilised the structure and materials that were already in place. Michael will carve into the existing columns and add a metal arch intertwined with detail. There will also be a symmetrical metal design on either side of the updated entrance.

Clay Workshops

Michael has linked up with Peel Park primary school as part of the project. He has given a talk to the children on stonemasonry and they have joined him on site to draw and watch him at work. This has inspired their own designs, which have been realised through clay workshops also run by Michael. Some of the designs will be carved into the columns of the new entrance.

Michael Scheuermann is on site until December 11^th to complete the carving of the columns. Metal work will be fitted in February, followed by localised landscaping to compliment the new entrance. The project, which is supported by Lancashire County Council’s Arts Development and former REMADE scheme, Hyndburn Borough Council and Arts Council England, will be finished by Spring 2012.

Helen Yates, Mid Pennine Arts Community and Projects Officer said, ‘We are helping make Peel Park a more inviting space with an entrance to match. We aim to leave a lasting legacy for the park and the people of Accrington.’

Author: Rebecca Fitton