Heidi Luker, an artist/coordinator is working collaboratively with artist Lise Bennet, on a new site-specific R & D project, Ambergate Wireworks – They Part They Played.
It was recently funded by the National Lottery and Arts Council England and co-production with Derby Museum of Making.
This project will explore their responses to how the wireworks changed the course of communication technology, engineering, warfare and farming throughout the world in an immersive installation. It will also tap into the stories from the local community who may have worked there or whose families did, to create a soundscape.
The project also focuses on community cohesion, particularly teenagers and older people (including Dementia) who feel socially isolated because of a lack of cultural input, especially after the recent flooding and COVID.
They will be working in partnership with St. Anne’s Church Hall Ambergate, the open garden schemes, NGS, which will exhibit our work in progress and Derbyshire Wildlife and White Peak Distillery, in a series of outside wire sculpting and story sharing drop-in sessions in the distillery’s outside area in Shining Cliff Woods and hope to attract not only participants with stories of the wireworks but local residents of Ambergate, who would like to meet socially and learn about flood prevention using nature.
With Derby Museum of Making they will run five drop-in sessions, of wire sculpting, looking at objects in the museum that used wire, culminating in a First Friday exhibition and presentation of our wire sculptures produced in the free studio within the wireworks throughout the project.
Recently they had a Community Consultation for their project, Ambergate Wireworks – The Part They Played, where they discussed the project, and found out who would like to take part in their wire making activities and story sharing.
