From 2018 to 2025, co-directors Laurel Gallagher, Isla Telford, and Jenny Harper led Urban Wilderness CIC, bringing art, play, and creative collaboration into communities across Stoke-on-Trent and the Midlands. This archive preserves a record of their projects, partners, and impact.
Mining Migrations was a collaboration between Urban Wilderness CIC, Keele University and Chatterley Whitfield Friends exploring hidden migration histories connected to Chatterley Whitfield Colliery. The exhibition was first presented at Chatterley Whitfield Nature Reserve during the Being Human Festival 2020.
Read MoreFor Winter Wastelands, artist and graphic designer Jon Paul Green created five short typographic poems installed across Stoke-on-Trent using hand-cut stencils and temporary aggregate. His interventions offered small moments of connection, resilience and reflection during the winter lockdown period.
Read MoreThe Immaculate Sisters of Hartshill explore seasonal rituals, symbolism and wellbeing through participatory performance rooted in mid-autumn transitions, inspired by Samhain and their lived experience of lockdown.
Read MoreWinter Wastelands brought together creative responses from across Stoke-on-Trent during the winter lockdown of 2020/21. Urban Wilderness CIC commissioned artists and communities to explore connection, wellbeing, ritual and resilience through public art, clay, poetry, digital portraiture and creative rituals.
Read MoreBy a Thread is a textiles artwork by illustrator Becki Kremer, combining hand embroidery and felt on transparent netting. Installed temporarily in Central Forest Park, the work reflects on the relationship between nature and humanity through a quotation from Wordsworth’s Lines Written in Early Spring.
Read MoreThe Weight of Things is an outdoor sculpture by David Bethell, hand-carved from polystyrene and covered with fibre-glass, sand, and paint. Installed in Keele Woods, the floating rock sculpture evokes hope and despair simultaneously, inspired by Rene Magritte’s 1953 painting Clear Ideas. The work encourages reflection on impermanence and resilience in challenging times.
Read MoreOur Youth Grows in a Wasteland is an audio drama project by Potboiler Theatre exploring young people’s experiences of being outdoors in Stoke-on-Trent. Through collected stories, audio plays, and a verbatim account of the city’s first Black Lives Matter protest, the work amplifies youth voices and local activism within Hanley Park.
Read MoreTaking Up Space brings together Black women from Staffordshire to reclaim green spaces through walking, dance, and poetry. Initiated after the 2020 lockdown, the project culminated in dance and poetry performances filmed in Hanley Park.
Read MoreA series of artist commissions exploring how lockdown reshaped our relationships with local green spaces across Stoke-on-Trent — turning wastelands into places of imagination and possibility.
Read MoreYouth-led canal-side transformation at Tinsley Marina, Sheffield — shaping place, confidence and connection through creative action.
Read MoreA co-created wooden vessel rising from the earth — a public art sculpture made with young people and artist David Bethell for the Forest Worlds Festival 2019.
Read MoreA joyful family arts festival co-created with young people and artists in Stoke-on-Trent, celebrating creativity, freedom and play through performances and workshops.
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