Moving Image and Music

Glorious Cotswold Grasslands
Art Competition & Exhibition

Hello, Katherine here. From June 2021 I worked on an exciting 1 year project as Art Coordinator for the Cotswold National Landscape – specifically working on their Glorious Cotswold Grasslands project.

The Glorious Cotswold Grasslands (GCG) project is an ambitious long term project aiming to restore the largest network of flower-rich Jurassic limestone habitat in the UK! The project has already restored over 120 hectares of flower-rich grassland; every hectare restored helps to reverse the decline of this unique and precious habitat, and helps wildlife thrive. This is a really wonderful and important project and I have enjoyed every moment of working on their art coordination.

For this project my work focused on encouraging young people in the Cotswolds to engage with the GCG project and to learn more about the wildflower meadow habitat restoration underway in their local area – all through the power of art! In the summer of 2021 I created, organised and ran an art competition for young artists in the Cotswolds and an exhibition to showcase their artworks. I was very pleased to be able to offer, as the prize for the competition, a workshop with character designer and animator Jim Parkyn. He has worked on classic films such as Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run (I was quite jealous of all the winners who got a place on this workshop)! The exhibition was held at the brilliant Nature in Art Gallery & Museum over the 2022 Easter Holidays. It was encouraging to meet all the young artists who had their work on display who all displayed a great passion for the arts and for the environment.

Thanks for organising such an amazing art exhibition, everyone is very pleased.” 

Anna Field, GCG Programme Officer

Alongside working on the competition and resulting exhibition I worked with fellow Let’s Create Stuff artist, Hatty Staniforth, to create a wildflower art pack for primary school aged children. The art part is full of fun facts about wildflower meadows, puzzles, a wildlife bingo and lots of art activities! It will be a permanent resource available to download from the Cotswold National Landscape website.

This project has been a dream to work on, combining my love of art with my interest in positive environmental action – I hope it has inspired young people to feel the same.