Looking back over the last year you sometimes forget how much you have achieved and all the amazing people you have worked with.
The culmination of our The National Lottery Community Fund funded art and citizen science project Bees of Bensham with Barbara Keating. Exploring habitats in the urban area of Bensham. Over two years we had over 1100 engagements, 35 workshops, 25 public walks, 15 public events, 4 visits working with 10 Gateshead community groups and several climate organisations and experts; engaging with residents, artists, and academics. Highlights include:
1) Publication of Dùthcas – a book of the project with artwork by Barbara Keating
2) Bees of Bensham podcast with discussions about, art, climate and community with residents, artists, cliimate and community workers who we have engaged with.
3) Bees of Bensham symposium in April 2024 bringing together residents, communities, artists, climate experts and academics exploring how art and science can work together in communities developed with Mark Goddard of Northumbria University and key presentation by Brigit Strawbridge
4) Winning the Gateshead Council Award 2024 for Tackling Climate Change
5) Mapping sites across Bensham, discovering and gathering data on flora and fauna, with a few surprising finds with Phil Macari, James Common, Mark Welfare, Wild Intrigue, Natural History Society of Northumbria and ERIC
6) Significantly the two seed gathering events on the development site in the centre of the community that had been left to go wild for nearly fifteen years before the bulldozers came in
7) Training with Climate Action North‘s programme ‘Rewilding, Nature and Us’.
8) The creation of a network of residents, artists, academics and community and climate organisations that have come together to make the project happen and we will continue to work with into 2025.
From this we developed Bensham Bites. Funded by the Royal Horticultural Society we brought together a network of residents, artists, health workers, community workers and organisations to explore how, through creative methods, we can tackle food poverty in the community exploring food waste, rescue, preservation and distribution. Highlights include:
1) Working with The Comfrey Project, Big Local Local Gateshead‘s Herb Hub, The Chev and people such as sheinaz stansfield, Nikki Dravers, Christine Wright, Barbara Keating and others to develop a series of workshops that can be replicated in the community
2) 30 people from 17 diverse organisations and residents attending our networking event in November 2024 to explore the next stage of the project and finding out why its needed in the community
3) Attending and presenting Bensham Bites at the Gateshead Food Partnership Summit launch in November 2024
4) Most importantly and enjoyably tasting some of the great dehydrated fruit leathers, vegetables, soups, crackers and healthy sweet treats that came out of the project.
Thank you to everyone who we have worked with and who I haven’t been able to mention. Looking forward to 2025
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