Full steam ahead for Northern Heartlands bid

Ewan Allinson (standing) and Chris Woodley-Stewart

A GROUP is hoping that a major opera, based on the heritage of Teesdale and its surrounds, will help secure £1.5million for the area.
Plans to launch a Northern Heartlands group on the back of the success of the Heart of Teesdale Landscape Partnership (HoT), which came to an end this year, were revealed during a public meeting in Barnard Castle.
If successful, the scheme aims to deploy artists and researchers to uncover hidden stories and heritage, and using that information to help guide future environment and landscape policy.
The proposal, led by former HoT officials Graham Young and Ewan Allinson, is one of two bids from the North East to be shortlisted for cash from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport’s Great Places Scheme.
Some 154 plans from around the country were submitted but only 12 will be selected.
Mr Young, a former chairman of HoT, said: “What we are going to do is work with local communities, put artists into local communities, and let those communities talk about their heritage, the landscape, how that is interacted, how that has created where they are today and how all of that can be brought together in order to enable them to control where they go tomorrow.”
He added that the group could call on the universities of Durham and Newcastle for archaeologists and researchers to uncover the heritage of communities to help them understand where they come from and their place in the landscape.
Mr Allinson, the former vice-chairman of HoT, added that there was a major shift by Natural England in determining policy.
Instead of being science driven, the shift now was to use art and humanities scholars to lead policy.
Building on the achievements of its Heart of Teesdale predecessor, he said communities in Teesdale and Weardale were in a position to influence the way policy is made and changed.
The planned Northern Heartlands scheme will cover Teesdale, Weardale as well as a lowlands area encompassing Shildon.
While the scheme wants to hold a range of activities in communities across its area, the group wants the activities to culminate in a grand opera finale to be staged at Shildon’s Locomotion museum in March 2020.
An as yet unnamed, but internationally renowned, opera company has already agreed to take part in the production.
Mr Allinson said: “200 years ago today we would have been in a landscape that was revving up to start the world railway age. The railway is a nice thing to attach that to as that is a major celebration, and it is a relationship between upland and lowland.
“To unite all these activities over the two-and-a-half years, we thought how nice it would be for there to be something towards which everyone can work, and create that sense of common purpose.”
Mr Young explained that the Heartlands scheme will employ two people who will work directly with communities in the upper areas of Teesdale and Weardale, and in the far lowlands around Shildon.
Communities in the central areas will be able to apply to a community initiatives fund to create their own activities, although these would have to meet the objectives of the scheme.
A similar fund was run successfully through HoT, Mr Young added.
An example of the type of activity the scheme would like to get involved in is the HoT-funded Addicted to Sheep documentary.
Mr Allinson said this was a “lovely marker for the kind of thing we would like to do”.
He added: “There is a lot of stories in that landscape that don’t come out, that need to come out.
“Farmers are sitting on treasure troves of stories as fascinating as the geology that explains some features.
“The stories behind farming, and just stories like Lord Barnard getting lost in the storm which has consequences two hundred years later.”
The landscape, he said, had inspired artists for generations, the most recent example being installation artist Steve Messam who used the upper dale landscape as a canvas to produce his Waterfall feature.
The meeting drew a small crowd of artists and community group representatives, as well as North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) director Chris Woodley-Stewart, all of whom were supportive of the bid.
However, the group needs to raise £150,000 before January 12 for it to move into the next phase of the bid.
Mr Young said he was confident that could be achieved.
Mr Allinson concluded: “It is a very ambitious scheme, and it is the ambition of it which is going to make it jump out in this process of being assessed.”