Botanical Leadscape

Commissioned by Killhope Lead Mining Museum

Botanical Leadscape is a large-scale participatory mural commissioned by Killhope Lead Mining Museum, created through a series of botanical printmaking workshops with local schools and the wider community. The project explored the relationship between lead-mining heritage and the remarkable metalliferous plants that thrive in contaminated soils.

Working directly from non-protected foliage using gelatine plate printing, participants produced monoprints that encouraged careful observation of leaf structure, texture and form. The act of printing became a way of slowing down and paying attention, revealing connections between plant life, geology and the industrial history of the landscape.

The project involved six school workshops and four public workshops. Together, participants created 625 individual prints that were assembled into a permanent mural for the museum. Seen collectively, the mural reflects both the diversity of the plant community and the many hands that contributed to its making.

Installed within the museum, Botanical Leadscape invites visitors to encounter the lead-mining landscape through its living ecology. The work brings together botanical observation, collective making and geological history, encouraging closer attention to the resilient relationships between plants, people and place.