Landscape scheme seeks £1.7m for Teesdale

PLANS are afoot to launch a £1.75million successor to the Heart of Teesdale Landscape Partnership (HoT) which came to an end this month.
If successful in getting a Lottery grant, the new scheme known as the Northern Heartlands will cover a far more extensive area. Along with Teesdale, the arts, culture and heritage project will cover Weardale and extend into a “lowland arc” through which the rivers Wear and Tees
flow.
The four-year HoT partnership was behind the redevelopment of Scar Top and Amen Corner, in Barnard Castle, cleared and upgraded many footpaths particularly the Teesdale Way, and launched cultural groups including young people’s music group Cream Tees. An expression of interest for the Northern Heartlands scheme has already been lodged with the Heritage Lottery Fund says former HoT chairman Graham Young.
He said: “In the face of fierce competition, the Northern Heartlands project, which is independent, has been given the green light to work up a fuller bid, to be submitted by January 12. This part of County Durham has a fascinating cultural landscape.
“From the Bronze Age riches of Cockfield Fell and the legacy of lead and coal mining, from agricultural shows to contemporary sculpture, the layers are many and ever changing.
“In 2025, County Durham will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which will be a chance to remind the world that this area was a rural cradle of the industrial revolution.”
Mr Young added that the area’s industrial heyday was gone and communities struggled to stay resilient against the odds.
He said: “Northern Heartlands will use the arts, culture and heritage as drivers for rural growth and for developing greater wellbeing, able to help build a new sense of common purpose as strong as that which existed in the county’s great railway age.”
Groups are now being asked to get in touch to see how the scheme can serve them.
They can contact Ewan Allinson with their thoughts and ideas at e_allinson@got
mail.co.uk.