Mining Landscape was a project of Aune Head Arts working in close collaboration with The Heartlands Project and the Tamar Valley AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty). The main project artists were Laura Smith working in Cornwall, and Tanya and Paul Morel working in the Tamar Valley.

The artist teams worked over much of 2009 to produce a wide-ranging series of work arising from the landscapes of the West Devon and Cornwall World Heritage Site. Going beyond the more traditional oral historian and reminiscence projects that have been explored extensively in this area, this project attempted to look at the area with artists' eyes, whilst still working closely with the people who live there or who were visiting there.

Find out more about the background of the project and the artists involved.

We worked closely with our two partners on the project: The Heartlands Project in Cornwall and the Tamar Valley AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) in Devon, and we would like to acknowledge the generous support of our funders, Arts Council England, West Devon Borough Council, as well as The Heartlands Project and the Tamar Valley AONB.

The project resulted in numerous activities, recordings, and other creative outcomes, many of which are featured here. You can explore them by clicking on the links below. Pieces will also be broadcast by a number of media outlets at various points, and information will be provided on our front page and on our Facebook group.

At The Heartlands Project, near Pool / Camborne (here) in the heart of Cornwall's former mining district, artist Laura Smith created two projects: Mine is Yours, and Mine is Yours II. Mine is Yours was the first part of Laura's work in which she worked with a group of young people to research the area and the history of the mining culture, from which she created an installation. The installation was shown at The Basset Institute, nr. Pool (here) in March 2009, a building originally built in 1878 for the miners of the Basset group of mines. You can listen to the sound files from Mine is Yours, and visit the gallery. Out of that project grew another, Mine is Yours II, which you can explore here (coming soon.) You can also visit the gallery.		In the Tamar Valley AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) (here-map), artists Tanya and Paul Morel worked with people in the area to create a film (which was shown as a 3-channel installation in exhibition, but which is also available here as a single-channel version.) Many local voices are seen and heard on the film; the three-channel version also features footage of the spectacular Tamar Valley Line, the branch railway line that runs between Plymouth and Gunnislake. Visit the project image gallery; watch a short version of the film. You can also see animations made by pupils at Bere Alston Primary School as part of Tanya and Paul's work on the project. Find out more about Tanya and Paul's work. Artist Martin Prothero also worked in the Tamar Valley, collecting sound recordings and talking to people. You can listen to some of that work here. Find out more about Martin's work.