Seaham Deneside Utopia (the Memory Map) was the result of a Creative Partnerships residency project at Deneside Infants School, carried out as a joint project with artist Sneha Solanki. The project looked at creative activities carried out by children at the School when cultural partners visited. Seaham Deneside Utopia shows a map with the school at its centre. The area around the school is one of forests, mountains and pastureland where farm animals graze. Each of the symbols in this area shows the children’s feelings about the work they created when working with visiting cultural partners. Beneath the school is an underground system of sprouting seeds and rooting vegetables next to a lake where fish and other water-creatures bask and swim. These areas show the teachers feelings towards the activities initiated by cultural partners. From beneath the earth and beneath the lake,the teachers are encouraging the growth that sprouts in the forest and pastures above.

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…Not just for Christmas resulted from a six-month residency with Northern Print Studio – an open access print facility in North Shields – and The Solution Group – a design and marketing consultancy based in Gateshead. Members, staff and directors of Northern Print and staff and directors of The Solution Group were asked to create work based on three initial briefs:

Pets Make Art – a chance for owners to collaborate with their pets in the creation of a work of art.

Gifts – “what do those folk at the other organisation really need”: a kind of gift exchange.

Collection – a chance to make something in response to the notion of a collecting and “the geekish anorakism that leads people to collect things”.

These briefs were communicated to Northern Print members and to staff at The Solution Group in the form of a newsletter taking The Solution Group’s own quarterly newsletter as its source.

Alongside the exhibition, the project resulted in the two organisations exchanging gifts – a bound and cased set of A4 images from Northern Print entitled “objects that we think The Solution Group needs...” and a singing artist dog toy, Pierre August Rover, from The Solution Group.