Time to eat!

It's hungry work walking round those woods.. our young teenage helpers enjoy a well earned burger.

As do the younger members of the group.

Construction of Memory Sticks

Once the whole group was back from the walks is was time to get creative... feathers, fabric, pine cones, lichen whatever had been collected from the woods was attached to the sticks. Then the sticks were decorated with special glow in the dark paint and left to dry ready for the mine trip the next day.

The finished products.

Clue Trail and Memory Stick Walk: Yurt Stayover

Finally the day arrived and after much planing and excitement a group of 14 young people arrived at Killhope for a sleepover in the yurts.

Mair and I had planned a couple of walks around the site to get them thinking about and looking at the place they were going to call home for the next 36 hours.

The group split into two, boys in one, girls in the other (a natural and comfortable dynamic). One group started with a walk in the woods hunting for objects to include in a memory stick that would be constructed in the yurt later. Whilst the other group headed off on a pre prepared Clue Trail.

Above are the girls trying to follow a fiendish clue about a diamond shaped hole.... 

Returning to base camp with sticks at the ready.

The boys at the end of the Clue Trail!

The Adventurers!

There are many more photos from our fantastic adventure at Killhope but I couldn't resist posting this one straight away. This was after our "glow in the dark sticks" mine trip on the Saturday morning, believe me those sticks really, really glowed!

In Stanhope with the St Thomas's Youth Group 28th April 2015

Twelve young people and four volunteers explored new ways of drawing with Bridget. First they drew portraits of each other onto Perspex sheets.....then they presented their drawings to each other and said a little bit about their sitter and his or her unique qualities.

Next they were each given a magic pen to work with that only showed up under UV light, luckily the pen lid had a mini UV light in it. They wrote secret messages and decorated over these messages with drawing traced through carbon paper. 

The session seemed to fly by and several participants took extra paper home to carry on with the new technique.

Getting creative in the Yurts with Stanhope Youth Group

After warming up in the cosy big Lapwing Yurt the members of Stanhope Youth Group were ready to get creative....

Mair and Bridget had set up the yurts with various weird and wonderful contraptions, here is what it looked like before the creative chaos began....

Tentatively the budding young artists explored the drawing tools that were on hand...

And then the fun began.....the young people began to make their mark on the communal drawing wall using the drawing tools provided as well as making their own..

A particularly fine sculptural head dress / drawing tool!

It was lovely to see groups working together, discussing and thinking through ideas, problem solving, but above all having fun..

Its amazing what you can do with some string, a pulley and some paint...

And then the sun came out and we moved outside for a finale performance of a rather explosive nature!!

A huge thank you to the volunteers who accompanied the young people on this splendid day and to Killhope for being so generous in providing the beautiful Lapwing yurt for us to use as our communal studio. We would also like to say thank you to Weardale Area Action Partnership for their generous support and last but not least the young people who came along and made it such a wonderful day of discovery and colourful fun.....................

October 5th 2014: Stanhope Youth Group visit Killhope

Finally, the day arrived when young people from Stanhope and the surrounding Weardale area visited Killhope in the company of visual artists Mair Hughes and Bridget Kennedy.

It was Sunday 5th October, not a great day weather wise, but 12 plucky members of St Thomas Church Youth Group made the journey up to Killhope to see what creative delights awaited them.....

First Mair and Bridget showed them round parts of the museum, pointing out the use of tools and machines in the daily lives of the men who worked at the lead mine over 150 years ago.

In the Blacksmiths shop they explored a more creative use of the old tongs on display!

Looking at Killhope Wheel and thinking about how water powered the machines in the Jigger House.

Then getting the feel for both over shot and undershot wheel power around the site...

The Buddle House became a temporary movie theatre to help show how contemporary artists use machines in their creative work.