Archive
Project: 'New Ground' Community-Based Bevelopment, UK
As part of a project funded by the Carnegie Trust UK’s Rural Action Research Programme, we worked with a landscape theatre company to undertake a local mining community consultation to explore a number of strategic regeneration issues in a fun, informal and engaging way. The project explored how rural communities, that have lost their defining industries, can utilise the often over-looked skills, facilities and infrastructure that already exist in communities and understanding how these can be used to kick-start regeneration from within (known as Asset-Based Community Development). The evidence collected is being used to inform UK rural development policy through the Carnegie Commission.
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Project: European Network of Mining Regions (ENMR)
ENMR was a 30 month project running from 2005 to 2008 and funded by the EU’s Interreg IIIC programme, which aims to encourage collaboration between European regions. Eden was invited to participate by Cornwall County Council, with the intention that Eden would represent Cornwall as a European mining region in the project. Cornwall must deal with current large-scale extraction issues as well as having to deal with decades of post-industrial (mining) decline. Such issues are common to other mining regions, particularly in terms of post-mining regeneration with the large-scale closure of mines of all kinds in eastern Europe in the recent past and near future.
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Roots in Clay, Cornwall, UK
The Roots in Clay photographic art project was a between the art department of Poltair School in St. Austell, Cornwall, and the Post-Mining Alliance. Poltair School is the main secondary school serving the St. Austell "Clay Villages". The on-going decline in the Claylands’ rural villages and the surrounding industrial landscapes causes negative external perceptions of the area and, inwardly, affects the self-image and confidence of the local inhabitants ultimately discouraging external investment in the area. Roots in Clay asked the young people of the Claylands to explore this self-image of the area – digging out the positive and the unusual – promoting the area as a landscape of the unexpected and starkly dramatic. The project encouraged forty year 11 pupils (aged 15 and 16) studying GCSE art and ICT at Poltair school, to analyse the Claylands through the lens of a camera. Students were tasked to produce digital photographic images to broach the aspirational question: Focusing on the characters, communities and landscapes of the Claylands, how can you best illustrate the spirit, hopes and aspirations of the people who live there? The images were exhibited to over 100,000 Eden visitors during its 2006-7 winter season. The exhibition aimed to highlight the potential for positive futures in the St. Austell Claylands, as expressed by the creative potential of the young people of its village communities, highlighting the positive aspects of the Clayland's unique, intriguing, man-made landscapes, its village life and community characters.