Urban Wilderness CIC is a community arts organisation based in Stoke‑on‑Trent. This archive highlights key projects and events that illustrate our practice, partnerships and impact. During this period, the organisation was led by founding co-directors Laurel Gallagher, Isla Telford, and Jenny Harper. Our flagship annual events — Pig Walk Parade and Winter Gathering — are included here as recurring anchor entries, alongside other major commissions and collaborations.
In the Balance is an artist-led programme by Urban Wilderness CIC that explores the intersections of art, environment, and community. Through workshops, talks, walks, performances, and immersive experiences, it invites audiences to engage with complex ecological and social questions while revealing the thinking behind the artwork.
Read MoreUrban Wilderness CIC hosted a Giant Lantern Puppet Masterclass with Andrew Kim, where artists and volunteers designed and built large-scale puppets for the Winter 2025 production, developing skills in puppet making and performance.
Read MoreUrban Wilderness CIC delivered a Creative Careers consultation with Year 9 students in Tunstall, using youth-led surveys to bring young people’s voices into local community planning.
Read MoreCreative placard-making workshops across the Moorlands invited young people to answer one question — “What do you want?” Their responses helped shape OUTSIDE’s organisational planning and Youth Advisory Group.
Read MoreA community biodiversity project in Longton combining nature walks, creative workshops and citizen science, supported by Keele University and featuring Dawn Chorus by Leanne Cunningham.
Read MoreA creative consultation in Longton that grew into public interventions, heritage-led activities and cultural programming — now continuing as a community-led CIC.
Read MoreThe Norns Collective presented a durational performance on Castlefield Viaduct, exploring rest, dreaming and communal care within the National Trust’s new urban sky park.
Read MoreUrban Wilderness CIC provides participatory research methods training for researchers and practitioners, exploring creative, inclusive and ethical ways to work with communities.
Read MoreUrban Wilderness CIC collaborated with Keele University and Natural England to explore how participatory storytelling can deepen community connection to sensitive natural landscapes. A fieldwork encounter at Wybunbury Moss revealed how creativity helps young people build meaningful relationships with place.
Read MoreA socially engaged art project by Dana Olărescu responding to the decommissioning of 20th-century power infrastructure — part of Decommissioning the Twentieth Century. Using posters and community engagement, it gives voice to workers, residents and future imaginaries around West Burton Power Station.
Read MoreA documentary film produced under Decommissioning the Twentieth Century, reflecting on the closure of Fawley Power Station and its impact on landscape, community and memory.
Read MoreA co-creative public art commission by Urban Wilderness CIC inviting communities to imagine what should be preserved, shared or re-imagined at the former Chatterley Whitfield Colliery — not just historic artefacts, but everyday stories, hope, and future possibilities.
Read MoreA major AHRC-funded research project led by Keele University in partnership with Urban Wilderness CIC, exploring how 20th-century industrial and energy infrastructure becomes heritage — and how communities can shape that process.
Read MoreALIGNMENT is a material-rich installation by Natalia Kasprzycka built from Etruria marl clay, waste bricks and found objects at Burslem Port. Commissioned for The Happenings 2021, it explores slow decay, site history and the transformation of industrial landscape.
Read More“Reconnect & Grow” is a living installation by Tracey Meek at Longton Exchange (Oct-Nov 2021), pairing fungi, moss and organic materials to question our relationship with nature and propose new symbiotic ecosystems in public art.
Read MoreTRACOBAND is a choreographed outdoor dance performance by artist Lola Adodo, blending live percussion, community volunteers and historic-inspired movement. Presented at Keele University and All Saints Community Garden during The Happenings 2021.
Read MoreArkadia is a large-scale installation by artists Stephanie Rushton and Mally Mallinson, installed at Longton Exchange in Sept-Oct 2021. Drawing on dystopian and post-human narratives, it transforms found materials, plants and imagery to challenge our relationship with nature, consumerism and climate change.
Read MoreA solo performance devised by Sophia Hatfield in collaboration with women’s running groups and the Canal & River Trust, staged along the Etruria Canal on 26 September 2021 as part of The Happenings Festival of Public Art in Stoke-on-Trent.
Read MoreThe Happenings festival in Stoke-on-Trent explored small-scale, site-specific public art, activating overlooked urban spaces through creativity, care, and connection.
Read MoreUrban Wilderness reflects on Public Art Now, an online symposium convened in April 2021 exploring public art as a relational, participatory and accountable practice.
Read More
