Impact case study database

These projects:

Throughout the Outfalls project Tarlo and Tucker, worked with the Louth Navigation Trust (LNT)to organise twelve events. For example, for ‘Visions of and for the Louth Canal’ the researchers invited members of the LNT, Hubbards Hills Trustees, Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust, the Mayor of Louth, and members of the public to view their exhibition at the canal warehouse and invited them to discuss their differing priorities. As a direct result a small grant was given by the Mayor to the LNT to support preservation work. Local relations and sense of collective place value were improved - “ sometimes seeing the place through someone else's eyes makes you cherish it even more" and “I hadn’t realised how much of backdrop the canal has provided and how its informed where my family has grown - until I visited the exhibition” [ E3]. The project contributed to preservation of the sites concerned, mobilised community action, and fostered increased value of these marginalised areas, and the subsequent wellbeing of inhabitants.

The chair of the Fitties Community Interest Company (CIC) writes “ Project Fitties work in 2016 highlighted both the history and ecological importance of The Fitties Chalet Park to a wide audience from our chalet dwellers to a much wider global community." She acknowledges that the formation of the CIC in 2016 was directly influenced by Project Fitties as was their agenda, especially its environmental emphasis and successful campaign to retain the Fitties’ conservation status [ E1]. The CIC used text and image from the project in their representations to the new owners of the site. A local resident commented on how the project had helped community cohesion: “ People have come together and stopped arguing as much”. Again, place value increased: “ It has been a stunning piece of work and benefited so many with pride and enjoyment” and “ Really interesting combination of images and words … I will think a little differently of the Fitties now when I walk the dog each Sunday morning through there.” [ E2].

The Groundwork Gallery, Kings Lynn, the first and only gallery in the U.K. to be devoted to the environment, invited Tarlo and Tucker to organise and host a study day in 2018 entitled "Conserve? Restore? Re-wild? art & ecopoetics rise to the challenge" on how local projects such as Outfalls relate to macro issues around rewilding. This attracted 40 specialist speakers and participants from around the U.K. including writers, artists, scientists, interested public and representatives from The National Trust and Wildlife Trust. Feedback forms stated that the event “crystallised some key issues” (Norfolk), was “ hugely inspiring” (Bristol) and that the mix of scientists and artists produced “ surprising perspectives” (Birmingham). Similar public events took place all over the country (Cambridge, Torrington, London, Hull) bringing publicity to the projects and to Northeast Lincolnshire and focusing on environmental issues raised [ E10].

A range of thirty-five events in varied venues (including libraries, galleries, outdoor industrial spaces, and guided walks) took arts to audiences who would not normally have accessed them. A local curator writes that the work “Encouraged pride and esteem in our area; we are in an isolated county, area of low cultural provision and aspiration". Local reach was high. For example, the Excavations and Estuaries Exhibition outreach events at Grimsby Fishing Heritage Centre in 2014 attracted 115 participants, a live audience of 2,337 and a broadcast/online audience of 57,000. Many of those who filled in feedback forms had never or rarely attended art exhibitions or poetry readings (of 39 local respondents to a Fitties event in 2016, 12 had never or rarely attended a poetry event; 9 stated they would if they felt such events were available/accessible, and 37 said they would attend a similar event in future) [ E2]. Of the Outfalls weekend in 2018, the secretary of the LNT noted [ E4] that events "attracted a wide range of people and of all ages who would not normally attend an art exhibition but who sat and gazed at a painting or read a poem about their favourite place and started reminiscing.”

The Principal Arts Officer for NE Lincs [ E5] writes how the work “ clearly convinced the powers that be that an Arts Development Team remains something NE Lincolnshire needs.” A local curator acknowledges that both projects “ influenced my approach to curating exhibitions and managing projects both in galleries and independent situations.” She went on to feature place-based works and poetry in programming at Abbey Walk Gallery, Grimsby (2014-16) and Gallery Steel Rooms, Brigg 2017 -2019 [ E6]. As a direct result of the research, the CIC inaugurated a an annual Fitties Festival, first held in 2019, 120 participants and the LNT commenced Culture on the Canal, an ongoing programme of events and exhibitions at the Louth Navigation Warehouse where a storeroom has been converted into a gallery as a direct result of Outfalls [ E4]. Their events regularly attract audiences of 60+ to the canal’s banks. Encounters with the research directly benefitted writers and artists from N.E. Lincs over 6 years of exhibitions, workshops and mentoring which inspired and developed the careers of twenty individuals [ E10].

Texts and images from Project Fitties and Outfalls have been selected for exhibition over 30 times. This showed how environmental artwork could bring originally site-based community arts-led research on local environmental issues to national and international attention. These exhibitions included local, accessible venues mentioned above, to national galleries in London, Cambridge and Kings Lynn and, internationally at The Sino-British Biennale, Yantai Art Museum, China, 2018 and Beyond Other Horizons: Contemporary paintings made in Britain and Romania, Iasi Palace of Culture, 2020. Poems were translated into Mandarin and Romanian for these exhibitions. A strong relationship was formed with the curator of the Yantai Art Museum who recognised the significance of the work: stating “ What emerged was that despite our differences in locality there was much in common and that art and poetry can affect how we feel about landscape and place.” [ E9] Artists' books which were accessible and affordable for all were shown at art fairs in Barcelona, London, South Yorkshire and Leeds.

The director of The Groundwork Gallery [ E7] notes “ A number of artists said it gave them the courage to contemplate trying to combine visual art and writing. …[this] has opened up a whole new area of inspiration which has continued to develop and has been carried through to other gallery events.” An American poet [ E8] writes of the impact of the research on her, “ It has helped me think through the rich possibilities for place-based artistic collaboration … my fifth book of poetry, Mississippi (Wings Press 2018), is a collaboration with the Delta photographer Maude Schuyler Clay”. Tarlo and Tucker featured over sixty such collaborations (many brought together specifically for these events) into two public group exhibitions of interdisciplinary work: In the Open Cambridge 2015 (New Hall Women’s Art collection) and In the Open Sheffield 2017 (Sia Art Gallery; Bank Street Arts). Subsequently two exhibitions were curated in Sheffield and Devon in (2018, 2019) that “ build on precedents set by Tarlo and Tucker,” as the curator Camilla Nelson stated in her open call for “Radical Landscapes: Innovation in Language and Landscape Art” (Torrington, Plough Gallery, Devon) [ E6].