Over the past few months, artists and writers have been busy as bees with the Green Hearts project, a partnership initiative between Tees Valley Arts, Tees Valley Wildlife Trust and Tees Forest. Five primary schools have worked with artists to explore sites that paint a varied picture of the Tees Valley landscape offering a wealth of industrial and natural inspiration for artists and children to draw from.
The sites include Greenabella Marsh in Hartlepool, Bowesfield Nature Reserve in Stockton on Tees, Margrove Heritage Centre in Redcar and Cleveland and nearby countryside, Skerningham Woods in Darlington and Three Becks in Middlesbrough.
The artists involved have had a lot of experience working in wild places, including Antarctica and Finland.
“This is a fantastic project”, said composer Craig Vear who will be working on the project. “It provides great opportunities to work with young people, teachers and environmental organisations creating a lasting legacy.”
“We hope to enhance the relationship students have with their local environment” says visual artist Andy Broderick. “Through positive experiences the project will hopefully generate long term interest in learning about and preserving the environment.”
Tees Valley Arts Heritage and Environmental Officer, Rachel Clarke said “It will be a busy few months with temporary art work, sound recordings, poetry and stories produced by the artists and students installed at the sites. The work produced will also create leaflets for future visitors to the sites and a manual for schools to creatively learn about their local environments”.
Green Hearts has been supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.