Lucy Wood reports
ARTISTS, volunteers and the community came together to create beautiful willow sculptures, nature-inspired waymarkers and a community banner inspired by the riverside heritage of a market town.
Over a three-year period Spalding, in the South Holland district of Lincolnshire, was revitalised with a creative and artistic show of strength.
Twisting eels and fish sculptures were crafted in workshops to create a river walk and etched stone waymarkers were designed. An environmental education programme within local schools called Eels in the Classroom, floating eco-systems and wildflower planting, not to mention scores of volunteering opportunities and the creation of a Spalding-themed banner, brought the River Welland to life for the community living around it. And the newly created Spalding Heritage Strategy envisions the future of heritage in the town over the next 10 years.
An event was held in March to mark all the achievements of the Spalding Reconnected project that saw visitors and those involved enjoy talks and performances at the Willow Eel Trap, a music-accompanied riverside walk, and lively performances by Spalding Community Choir and Morris dancers.
Nick Jones, a co-director of the Arts Council-funded Transported Creative People and Places programme, the creative lead for Spalding Reconnected, said the aim was to reconnect the town and its people with some aspects of its history, and to the river as a wildlife haven – “a jewel in the town’s landscape crown that has perhaps been forgotten.”
Nick explained: “It’s called Spalding Reconnected, but of course it is more complex than achieving that in one programme. But this is the start of that ambition, part of regenerating the town and making it a more interesting place to live and visit and helping to find a way of contributing to the local economy.
“The overall project included the creation of a heritage strategy to underpin future projects and funding, riverside environmental enhancements by East Mercia Rivers Trust to improve the wildlife ecology, the creation of illustrated waymarkers to guide visitors to some of the town’s attractions and heritage highlights, and our project, The Riverwalk, which from the outset included extensive creative consultation to make sure we were capturing and reflecting the views, preferences, and ideas of residents.
“Creative consultation is just a pompous way of saying we ran arts activities, drawing, stone painting, origami, willow weaving, chalk drawing, face painting on the riverside in the market place, making art and asking people how they feel about the river, what they valued, what they thought could be improved, and how the town’s heritage could contribute to future projects to make the place better and for people to appreciate it more. This is the start of the Reconnected challenge, and the celebration event is a marker from which we will move forward.”
The project began with a council-organised walk for community organisations to identify areas that needed improving and areas, like the river, which needed more investment and appreciation.
The next step was to draw together the expertise, experience and capacity to take some of those priorities forward. As a result, the Spalding Reconnected: Historic Town and Riverside initiative became a partnership between South Holland District Council, Heritage Lincolnshire, Transported Arts, East Mercia Rivers Trust, and Lincolnshire County Council, and was funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Lottery players via a £250,000 award.
Nick told how the project took in how people feel about a place, what they care for and value, to work together and “create something special.”
“Appreciation of the fabric of the place unfolds; its quirky architecture, curved windows, and bridges that inspired the shapes of the willows and tops of the waymarkers. And its history – eels gathering to feed on the spilled yeast-enriched washings from the beer barrels at the brewery across the way, and especially of fond childhood memories of near-forgotten times eel fishing here in the town,” said Nick.
Katy-Jayne Lintott, project manager (conservation and heritage) for Heritage Lincolnshire, said: “It’s been fantastic to support this transformational project for Spalding – celebrating the town’s unique history and heritage. The collaborative and creative approach taken by project partners and local people has been inspiring and is testament to what can be achieved when nature, arts and heritage initiatives come together.”
