SeaScapes — Co/Lab Sunderland

Partner: SeaScapes: Tyne to Tees Shores and Seas (SeaScapes)

Funder: National Lottery Heritage Fund, £142,000

SeaScapes Co/Lab Curator and Research Lead: Dr. Suzy O’Hara

Co/Lab Sunderland (University of Sunderland) is partnering with SeaScapes to lead a multi-year creative engagement programme entitled SeaScapes CoLab. The project aims to scaffold creative, cross-disciplinary risk taking and experimentation across and between the arts and cultural sectors, research, (marine) heritage and natural sectors, and coastal communities.

The resulting artworks, podcasts and exhibitions explore how we can better connect with our world and co-develop sustainable ways to care for our marine environment through art and creativity.

SeaScapes CoLab

SeaScapes is a National Lottery Heritage Fund project and focuses on coastal and marine heritage in the North of England.

The Tyne to Tees, Shores and Seas Partnership scheme (aka SeaScapes) is leading 23 projects that support their ambition ‘to reveal and better manage the hidden heritage of our unique seascape and create opportunities for learning, access and enjoyment in order to ignite stewardship of this special place for generations to come’.

SeaScapes CoLab is a multi-year creative engagement project for the SeaScapes marine heritage project, entitled SeaScapes CoLab. The project aims to critically explore the role that art and curatorial knowledge, processes and tools can play in protecting our maritime heritage and marine environment. Between 2021 - 2023, the project devised and tested an emergent programme of interdisciplinary curatorial models of cross-sector commissioning resulting in 9 creative commissions, podcasts, a series of sharing events, the Blue Futures exhibition and a publication.