I have been collaborating with local artist Heidi Luker, a site-specific installation/theatre designer for several months now, in researching and exploring the wireworks in Ambergate, where I live. Heidi has worked on UNESCO World Heritage Sites, within the Derwent Valley, most recently researching Willersley Castle, which was a WW2 maternity unit for East End London mothers, and she used the research to write and produce a play called The London Mothers. She has also created site specific works for North Mill in Belper, and an installation that explored early wire drawing in Milford www.heidiluker.co.uk

As a site specific artist, my work materials often reflect the area I am living or working in. When I lived in Bristol, the Sugar House project emerged, because of Bristol’s numerous sugar making ‘houses’, and I created a collaborative project involving other artists responding to a parcel I sent to them, including various types of sugar, a photograph of a part of one of the sugar houses, a map of the locations and a bottle of River Avon water, along with a stamped addressed postcard. Each artist went on a ‘journey’, with the materials, recorded it somehow and sent me a postcard about it. One made a ‘house’ out of recycled materials, that ‘held’ the sugars in different ‘rooms’, one walked with the sugars, and mixed them with the river water, and a cigarette butt from when she sat writing poetry about the relationship between the sweetness of sugar and the pain of the slave trade. Another artist used her sugars in tea and did a diary. I loved the diversity of responses.

No.1 Old Docks Cottage project (more detail on this in my website ‘Projects’ section) was a 3 month residency, responding to the boarded up old dockers cottage, which had been empty for 9 years. My materials included many of the goods that would have passed by the cottage, from other countries and areas, along the Bristol Channel. Sand, woven cloth, wax. The neighbouring cottage was used by a sailing club, and one of the members sat with me, telling me about the moment when his brother didn’t come back in on the sand boats, and he was given his shoes, with no words. These poignant stories guided the way my work developed in the cottage.

So now, as the Ambergate wireworks project begins to take shape between Heidi and myself, community stories are being collected, research into the history of the process and product is growing, it is enriching the way we are working with the wire, and each other. The process of wire ‘drawing’ which is the technical term for how wire is made, needed the River Derwent for cooling, as the metal needs heating in order for it to be ‘drawn’. The River Derwent has shaped the way we live now, with it having the first water powered cotton spinning mill, in the world, in Cromford. The Derby Silk Mill was the first known factory. But little is openly known, both locally and more far reaching, about Ambergate Wireworks, and mostly the buildings are seen as either grim or fascinating, for their state of decay, and ever changing graffiti. Oakhurst House, situated behind the wireworks is a local landmark, and favourite spot for the paranormal groups around here, due to its reputation of being haunted. It was built for Francis Hurt’s 4 unmarried daughters, but they refused to move there, and it was taken over by the Johnson family, who owned the wireworks. It is now a much photographed house, due to its dramatic fall from grandeur to dereliction. These buildings all have the most beautiful backdrop of Shining Cliff Woods, a once royal hunting forest of Duffield Frith, and now a SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest), partly managed by the Foresty Commission and the Grith Pioneers, who have a fascinating history within the woods.

The history, processes, uses, social and environmental impacts are fascinating, in both positive and negative ways. But we feel this story needs to be more widely told, and shared. We look forward to be able to share more with you soon.