A new local arts organisation has been awarded £10,000 to create a project with seven schools in Maryport.
The Laal Collective, a new arts organisation in Cumbria, has received a grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for a new heritage project, The Sands of Time: Unlocking the World of the Honeycomb Worm.
The project, based in Maryport, works in partnership with Maryport School cluster, Living Seas Northwest and Centre For Leadership Performance and will engage with 200 young people across seven schools.
The project explores the vital role that honeycomb worms play in the health of our waters.
The honeycomb worm is a tube-dwelling creature that cements together sand grains to form structures where they live, building up to a metre tall and several metres wide. They can fuse together to form reefs that stretch over several kilometres.
These structures protect the coastline from erosion whilst also playing an important role in the coastal ecosystem biodiversity and therefore they are of high conservation concern. Global climate change leading to storms and cold weather can kill off the worms, and humans pose a threat in the form of building sea defences, farming mussels, pollution and trampling.
Allonby Bay, a designated marine conservation zone that ends at Maryport, has the UK’s most extensive and best representative examples of the honeycomb worm reefs (up to 38 species can be supported on a well-established reef).
The young people will create a shared story of honeycomb reefs and their inhabitants. The story will start in one school and pass through the others to add to. Children will also create a project blog for their school’s website and celebrate the honeycomb worm through the story and an exhibition that celebrates their knowledge.
A QR code will be created for the project which will be promoted locally so visitors to Maryport can see its legacy. During the project, each of the schools will visit Allonby, supported by a coastal expert from Living Seas Northwest.
The Laal Collective work with communities creating art projects which celebrate identity and sense of place, through collaborative and collective approaches. Their vision is for communities to be proud of where they come from and to show that through their creative voice.
Ali McCaw, The Laal Collective director, said: “We are thrilled to have received this support thanks to National Lottery players. We are confident that the project will raise the profile of the honeycomb worm and all it does for the ecosystem and that the young people will continue to protect their local marine heritage as a result.”
The project has also received additional funding from The Francis C Scott Charitable Trust.
