Transforming PerceptionsChanging Lives

Mid Pennine Arts 2010

Contents

Contents and Introduction

The Team & About Mid Pennine Arts

Visual Arts Visual Arts: Contemporary Heritage Creative Learning

Creative Learning: Hendon Brook Special School

Public Realm

Public Realm: Padiham Greenway

Transforming Perceptions - Changing Lives

Photographs by Nigel Hillier, Peter Hope, Denis Oates, Ian Lawson

Mr Peter Kenyon (Chair) Mr Terry Luddington (Vice Chair)

Trustees:Ms Janet Barton Mr Peter JordanCounty Councillor Shelagh Derwent Mrs Maureen NeaveCouncillor Roger Frost Councillor Sonia RobinsonCouncillor Roger Wilson Councillor Pamela Lally

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Spectacular wall hanging for the new ACE Centre by Chila Kumari Burman, working with Nelson residents.

Front Cover: Leading mountain biker Ali Clarkson tests Ferroterrasaurus, which he helped design with sculptor Robin Dobson

Mid Pennine Arts is a driving force for the arts in Pennine Lancashire, recognised nationally for devising and delivering exemplary integrated arts programmes that inspire, surprise and delight. We bring art, people and places together to transform perceptions and change lives. Created as a partnership, we develop our most successful work through partnerships, networks and creative collaborations. Our work is people-centred, people-friendly, celebrates diversity and promotes equality of opportunity. We embody a spirit of discovery and build a dimension of creative learning into all our projects. We always strive for the best possible creative results and the most ambitious impacts. We aim to break new ground in the content, context and the outcomes of our work. This will continue despite an extremely unstable public funding environment. •Mid Pennine Arts is moving from gallery-based exhibitions to using Pennine Lancashire’s historic buildings to show innovative art installations usually only seen in a city context.

•Our highly successful Panopticons have generated national and international interest, with more than 175,000 visitors to date.

•Projects like Padiham Greenway have united local people in celebration.

•We have continued to develop Rossendale’s Valley of Stone project, bringing stunning new interactive structures into the Lee Quarry mountain bike centre in Bacup and taking art into new and challenging areas.

•We offer rich creative learning opportunities to nearly 200 schools, inspiring young people to a lifelong commitment to the arts and culture.

•We are now in the launch phase for Contemporary Heritage – a highly ambitious programme that will see installations commissioned from high-profile contemporary artists, to be situated at some of Pennine Lancashire’s most spectacular heritage sites.

In the following pages we outline recent achievements and look forward to the coming year. In tough times our formidable team are ready to meet the challenge and deliver outstanding creative work that inspires change.

INTRODUCTION

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THE TEAM

Stephanie HawkeMelanie Diggle Nick HuntLucy GreenRob Carder

Helen YatesPhilippa RoddamDavid SmithRebecca Alexander

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Mid Pennine Arts was founded in 1966 as an innovative partnership approach to developing and promoting the arts. Today’s organisation has evolved into a driving force for the arts in Pennine Lancashire, recognised nationally for creating and delivering inspirational integrated arts programmes. We bring art, people and places together to transform perceptions and change lives. Since 2000 we have focused strongly on locating culture within the wider agendas of economic and social regeneration. Mid Pennine Arts pioneered with creative projects serving public funded programmes in urban andrural locations. Over the last year we have delivered programmes that have engaged thousands of people, transforming our environment and creating positive perceptions of Pennine Lancashire. As we work towards our 50th anniversary in 2016, we will continue to focus on our role of promoting the arts as a vehicle for transformation.

ABOUT MID PENNINE ARTS

Over the last year, our programme delivered:

• 24 commissions of new work• 14 exhibitions• 30 artist residencies• 26 events• 458 artist workdays• 377 sessions of participatory work We reached:

• 9,352 project participants• 18,838 total session attendances• 35,207 exhibition & visual arts attendees• 6,551 at events• A total of 60,596 people

OUR AIMS FACTS

• Work strategically to raise the local profile of the contemporary arts. • Deliver an ambitious programme that will inspire existing and new audiences. • Attract artists of national and international standing. • Support the growth of the creative arts sector in our area. • Provide creative learning opportunities to people of all ages. • Encourage decision makers to locate creativity at the heart of community life. • Contribute to a vibrant environment in which to live and work, reinforcing collective pride and identity. • Build a distinctive cultural destination for visitors.

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We celebrated the final season in Mid Pennine Gallery by commissioning a sequence of original work creating unique, audacious installations; Kit of Parts by Jo Ball; Transition by Onya McCausland and Mary Yacoob, and a final exhibition of startling originality Get Over It by artist and architect Carol Mancke. Our partnership with Shisha on the continuing Araam project proved to be a highlight, giving the programme a significant international dimension and celebrating diversity. The project inspired an international exchange partnership developed by Shisha and Mid Pennine Arts. Pennine Lancashire artist Halima Cassell spent six weeks in Pakistan on a split-site residency starting in Karachi at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, a prestigious academic institution, and also with VASL, a highly renowned artist collective in Karachi. Halima then moved on to Lahore where she was based at the internationally acclaimed National College of Arts, also working with students at Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. An exhibition of work by Halima Cassell and Zarah Hussain followed which later toured to the Turnpike Gallery in Jan/Feb 2010. Araam allowed us to create friendship links with cultural and educational institutions in Pakistan, cementing links and emphasising our many bonds.

This highly successful partnership project is set to continue. Zarah Hussain is due to fulfil a residency in Pakistan during 2010 and a publication and further exhibitions of work are planned. Additionally, we contributed to the Pennine Lancashire AND festival, collaborating with folly on an installation by digital artist Stanza at Towneley Hall. We will continue to contribute to local and regional visual arts networks and continue to take a key role in promoting contemporary visual arts, working collaboratively in order to achieve shared aims.

VISUAL ARTS

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A key milestone was the Be Inspired event at Towneley Hall in November 2009. We brought together leaders in their field to present world class examples of contemporary art commissioning and artist led intervention in heritage sites. The stimulus for the event was to inspire over 50 colleagues from heritage venues and other partner agencies, to share our aspirations and ambitions for the Contemporary Heritage programme. Be Inspired, funded by Renaissance North West, proved to be a huge success and now five heritage venues are partners in this flagship programme.

“The exhibitions keep getting better and better.”William Titley, Lancashire artist and UCLAN lecturer.

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VISUAL ARTS

Contemporary Heritage gives people the rare chance to view major works of art outside a city environment by artists of national and international standing. Commissioned artists will create site specific works in response to some of Lancashire’s most beautiful heritage venues to awaken and capture the stories of these intriguing sites. It’s a real coup for Pennine Lancashire that the first commission of our flagship project has been awarded to Geraldine Pilgrim, a highly acclaimed artist recognised for her extensive experience in creating site responsive installations for heritage venues, including large scale commissions for both English Heritage and the National Trust. Geraldine’s new commission, Not Forgotten, is inspired by the Towneley family history, the architecture of Towneley Hall, and the surrounding landscape.

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Not Forgotten is a stunning visual arts experience and Contemporary Heritage’s strong association with place adds to the rich cultural offer in the area, thus strengthening Pennine Lancashire as a cultural destination and attracting new audience and visitors to the area. Through our Creative Learning programmes, young people and adults will experience the local history animated from something that is potentially remote into something which has come alive. The artwork connects visitors to the past providing a ‘new way of seeing’ the history which we can often take for granted. Contemporary Heritage is a partnership project, developed thus far by our five partner venues; Towneley Hall and Park, Gawthorpe Hall, Clitheroe Castle Museum, Helmshore Mills Textile Museum and Turton Tower.

We invite everyone who supported the Mid Pennine Gallery to join us on this new adventure, as we start to use the whole of Pennine Lancashire as our gallery. We believe that this bold, new work will provide a terrific counterpoint to some of our heritage treasures, and will attract a new, wider audience to explore the splendoursof Pennine Lancashire.

Towneley family, Towneley Hall and Geraldine Pilgrim.

Gawthorpe Hall will be a future venue for Contemporary Heritage

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Our passionate commitment to education fuels our aim to encourage educators, artists and decision-makers to see creativity as central to education. This sits deep within our values – we know the arts are a means to transform lives and fuel innovation. We are determined to ensure that the children and young adults of Pennine Lancashire – our future leaders, educators and entrepreneurs – are engaged with arts and culture. After all, working towards a better tomorrow is not simply a matter of having more money – it’s about leading a life that is fuller, more vibrant, more colourful, more satisfying.

We offered our excellent Creative Learning programme to 200 schools across our area and continue to attract praise from both strategic and school partners. Creative Partnerships contracts via Curious Minds see us working in-depth with specific schools.

Summer 2009 saw an attendance of 200 at Nelson’s ACE Centre for the launch of the new Kicking Leaves anthology involving work by young people from schools across five districts. The climax of the project was when the author of the acclaimed “Gruffalo”, international best-selling children’s writer Julia Donaldson, made a personal appearance in Burnley. We were thrilled to secure her services.

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CREATIVE LEARNING

Increasingly our Creative Learning work will reinforce and enrich our Visual Arts and Public Realm activities.

Stephanie Hawke has been an important addition to the Creative Learning team. Her background in museums education will help us to integrate more effectively the Creative Learning programme with our visual arts and public realm work. A trained CABE accredited Spaceshaper workshop leader, we will use her experience to ensure that the arts and public consultation sit firmly within Pennine Lancashire’s renewal processes.

This autumn’s return of the popular Kicking Leaves festival will involve young people, schools and partnerships with libraries and museum services. We also embark on a new partnership with Transdev bus company that will see young people’s writing in poster form on key bus routes, giving the programme very high visibility and reaching huge new audiences in a new and exciting way.

Work with The Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts willfocus on supporting the Contemporary Heritage commissions atTowneley Hall. We’ll continue to support community engagementfor REMADE Creative Regeneration projects, and when invitedwe’ll work in-depth with individual schools using the arts tointegrate Creative Learning into their curriculum.

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“The project has had a remarkable impact on raising student grades...”

Head of Media Studies at Haslingden High

CREATIVE LEARNING

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We are passionate advocates of the power of the arts to transform young lives and have a positive impact on childhood development. To put this fundamental value into practice, we partner with the Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts - an educational charity committed to helping children experience the arts in a high quality and sustained way.

Together, we have provided access to the arts for young people who would otherwise grow up with only limited opportunities to engage with the arts. The children we have reached come from a variety of backgrounds and many have behavioural and learning difficulties. Many such children leave school having never set foot in an art gallery, attended a theatre performance nor listened to an orchestra play live. Through our partnership with the Foundation, we’re working to inspire children to a life-long engagement with the arts.

One such case is Hendon Brook Special School in Nelson, a referral unit for 5-11 year old pupils who’ve been excluded from mainstream schools. Some of the pupils have been excluded as a result of very challenging behaviour. They are often amongst the most difficult to engage with, but often they are the ones in need of the most significant support.

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We worked with a small group of children from years 3-6 during a recent visit to Towneley Hall in Burnley. Further work took place back at school.

The visit and workshop gave the children the opportunity to explore a venue that was entirely new to them. They engaged with their surroundings in unexpected ways by creating and listening to echoes, playing their own music and composing their own tunes. Back at school they continued to work together in ways that surprised their teachers, remembering details about what they had seen and done, playing together and listening intently to music played to them.

One teacher from Hendon Brook described how wonderful it was to see a different side of the pupils and expressed surprise at “those who you think might display awkward and disruptive behaviour and who are actually a dream.”

The teacher added: “Listening is a skill that almost all of them find very difficult. For many of these children just sitting in a group getting along with the others like this is a major achievement.

“This project gives our children the chance to be out in the community, to take part in things. Our children are the kids that misbehave, they’re the ones that are punished and that don’t usually get to go anywhere.”

The impact of the day’s work was highlighted by one very withdrawn boy who had not contributed at all during the morning’s session and who at the end of the afternoon finished playinghis xylophone and asked very enthusiastically “can you comeagain tomorrow?”

PUBLIC REALM

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Our Public Realm programme exemplifies the way in which we bring arts, people and places together to transform perceptions and change lives. Our major commitment has been the partnership with the REMADE team at Lancashire County Council (LCC), along with the County Arts Development Service. Delivery of REMADE Creative Regeneration got fully underway in early 2010 with extensive community engagement work for Padiham Greenway.

Since Autumn 2009 we have installed three sculptural commissions for the Valley of Stone partnership at the former Lee Quarry site. Robin Dobson’s striking pieces have transformed the popular biking destination, brought together creative arts and extreme sports - engaging a new and wider audience.

The Talking Shop portfolio is moving towards a countywide role with encouragement from Lancashire County Council. We successfully launched this countywide rollout of the project in vacant shop premises in Preston. The opening of Nelson’s major new facility, the ACE Centre saw Pendle Leisure Trust commission us to produce a celebratory programme. This included a residency by Chila Kumari Burman, who created multimedia banners with contributions from local people and a mass observation photography project by Paul Floyd Blake, creating a wall of portraits of 100 local people. Spectacular attendance figures ensued, with Pendle Leisure Trust confirming that 15,000 people visited during the first week, and 100,000 over six months.

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“The output from this excellent project and its inclusion in the Mid Pennine Arts collection at Lancashire Record Office will enable future generations to look back and understand how the small business sector looked and operated in these local communities and how it was impacted by the regeneration process - an important story which will not necessarily be recorded elsewhere.”

David Tilsley, Archivist, Lancashire Record Office about Talking Shop

We have a long and proud track record of successful projects in the public realm, from the Panopticons to the Land programme, and most recently Valley of Stone. The landscape, the visitor experience and the image of Pennine Lancashire have all been enriched. We believe that Destination Art – the new kind of cultural tourism that projects like the Panopticons inspire - must be a major factor in shaping our growing visitor economy.

Our partnership in REMADE Creative Regeneration, giving new life to derelict land, will progress despite the current uncertainty around public spending. The focus shifts in the coming months to a key site linking Penwortham into central Preston. The skills and experience we have built up in delivering successful community engagement through arts projects will be used to create new opportunities in the private, public and community sector.

The issues raised by our evolving Talking Shop programme will be increasingly vital. We are now working with Lancaster District Chamber of Commerce and Storey Gallery on a Talking Shop project for Lancaster. Over the next year we expect Project Pride, an innovative retail heritage project led and shaped by young people, to bring a new dimension to this work.

We believe that the success of the Valley of Stone commissions in Lee Quarry will encourage further work around the Adrenaline Gateway. This can form a cornerstone of our plans to promote Destination Art.

Meanwhile our expertise will support a range of developing projects - a sculpture trail feasibility study for Whitworth, a new art trail in Pendle, public art commissioning for Tesco, and support for Preston Guild 2012.

Nowhere, though, better embodies our aims for work in the public realm than Burnley’s Weavers’ Triangle. What better place could we chose to bring art, people and places together to transform perceptions and change lives! Weavers’ Triangle represents an immense potential for a far brighter future for Burnley and Pennine Lancashire. Our public sector partners are striving to deliver change. We believe we have a strong contribution to make, starting with moving into Weavers’ Triangle in November. It’s a Big Society thing for us, making sure that everyone is able to contribute to the process of renewal.

Padiham Greenway used to be a disused railway line, part of the former Great Harwood loop. The line’s embankment formed a barrier, separating two local communities. Lancashire County Council’s REMADE (Reclamation and Management of Derelict land), in partnership with Sustrans Connect 2, set out to develop the former railway line into high quality cycle paths, footpaths and bridleways to bring these communities together, to use and to enjoy.

Mid Pennine Arts was asked to facilitate an engagement process using art and creative learning to help bring the two communities together. We started by working with partners, community organisations and local schools. As with any community engagement project, we started by looking and listening – we walked the area, attended local meetings and had numerous conversations to understand the area better. This helped us to identify potential leaders who would be prepared to take projects forward andsustain them.

PUBLIC REALM

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As a result, a number of projects were developed and a local steering group was formed as both a sounding board and to coordinate activity. Padiham has an extended schools cluster where primary and secondary schools work together on projects of mutual benefit, so we worked with them on a Heritage Lottery Fund application focusing on creative learning around the heritage of the railways. This has helped generate lots of interest in its new use.

The Padiham Greenway programme ultimately consisted of seven inter-connected creative projects delivered by leading arts practitioners sourced by Mid Pennine Arts. We engaged several thousand local people through these projects, helping them to see Padiham Greenway in a new way and getting actively involved in its future. A formerly derelict area is now a community asset.

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“The Padiham Pageant is by far the best Connect2 celebration in the whole of the UK to date.Connecting communities isn’t just about thephysical changes made to the built environment.It’s also about the emotional and psychological responses in the communities. The Pageant was a shining example of best practice.”

Dave Steven Sustrans: Volunteer and Community Engagement, North

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Mid Pennine Arts is a driving force for the arts, recognised nationally for devising and delivering exemplary integrated creative programmes. We bring art, people and places together to transform perceptions and change lives. The vast experience of our team ensures excellence across a range of arts disciplines and responds to identified needs. Our work with private, public or community sector clients inspires participants, unlocks aspirations and reignites civic pride.

We are an independent charity. We’re based in Pennine Lancashire but our work and influence extends way beyond into county-wide projects and into West Yorkshire. Our work has achieved national and international recognition. Our most successful work is developed through partnerships, networks and creative collaborations. Our work is people-centred and people-friendly - it celebrates diversity and promotes equality of opportunity. We embody a spirit of discovery, and integrate creative learning into all our projects. We strive for the best possible creative results, and the most ambitious impacts. We’re always aiming to break new ground in the content, context and outcomes of our work.

The unique way in which we bring art, people and places together engages thousands of people from all walks of life every year. It is also drawing many thousands of visitors into our area, as Pennine Lancashire evolves into a cultural destination. The Valley of Stone project brought stunning new interactive structures into the Adrenaline Gateway project, enhancing the growing national and international reputation of Lee Quarry mountain bike centre in Bacup. The outcome is a series of stunning installations in a challenging new setting that takes contemporary art to a new audience.

TRANSFORMING PERCEPTIONSCHANGING LIVES

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Two years after completion, the Panopticons are transforming perceptions of Pennine Lancashire – Northern Rail and Ordnance Survey have recently used images of the Panopticons to identify the area. Panopticons have been positively received and widely embraced – Rossendale’s Halo and Burnley’s Singing Ringing Tree in particular have become very strong local brand images. Panopticon images are being used by local government, regeneration bodies and the Lancashire and Blackpool Tourist Board. Their iconic nature is also drawing interest from abroad - Standox, one of Europe’s leading automotive suppliers has recently used images of Halo in its popular calendar.

Mid Pennine Arts will continue to offer cutting edge contemporary art to show our audiences a new way of seeing their surroundings. Our Visual Arts, Creative Learning and Public Realm activities integrate to create a whole that is far greater than the sum of the parts. This is how we can best transform perceptions and change lives – no matter where or with whom we work.

“Mid Pennine Arts has a well developed business strategywhich has been clearly communicated and understood by an engaged, talented and positive team of people.”

Investors in People AssessorRoger Bradshaw March 2010

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“..an exhibition that uses photography, technology and imagination! A video

well worth seventeen minutes of my life!”

Gallery visitor

Interval II, Triptych video projection, 17’ 22”Suki Chan, 2009, © Peter Hope