Connections

Lead Artist – Allenheads Contemporary Arts, with additional funding from Killhope Lead Mining Museum

Connections was a practice-led project exploring how walking, attention, and shared experience can deepen relationships with landscape, heritage, and one another. As lead artist, I developed and led two participatory artist walks that foregrounded noticing, slowness, and embodied encounter within the lead-mining landscapes of the North Pennines.

Walking the Leadscape, developed with artist Steve Cousins, was a performative walk that invited participants to engage in acts of heightened attention. Activities included blindfold walking, molehill archaeology, slow and silent movement, and moments of shared reflection and food. The walk explored how subtle shifts in pace and perception can reveal overlooked histories, textures, and relationships within the landscape.

The Botanical Walk and Drawing Workshop focused on metalliferous plants growing around Killhope Lead Mining Museum. Through slow walking, plant identification, magnifying tools, and drawing, participants were encouraged to observe how geology, toxicity, and resilience shape plant life. The workshop combined scientific observation with artistic enquiry, supporting careful, non-extractive ways of learning from place.

Together, these walks positioned walking as an artistic and research method, fostering collective attentiveness, care, and curiosity toward landscape and heritage.