Abstract

WALK, using funding from a Your Heritage grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, has been working on Stringing Bedes – A Poetry and Print Heritage. At the project’s core is a series of ‘Pilgrimage Walks’ along the route of the Bede’s Way footpath, between St. Peter’s in Sunderland and St. Paul’s, Jarrow. These walks were lead by natural historian Keith Bowey, artist Marcia Ley of the University of Sunderland Artist Mark Todman and poet Jake Campbell. During these walks, the project ‘explored’ the significance of this route, its landscapes and wildlife and, using words and art, began to investigate how the experience of walking though this landscape connected the participants to Bede, and vice-versa. The ‘Stringing Bedes Exhibition' comprises new art by eight artists in response to the pilgrimages which they took part in during the summer of 2015.