Lawson Park, Grizedale Arts
Tony Henderson, The Journal
A Forest arts centre created from an historic hill farm will be officially opened this month.
On July 10, Tate Gallery director Sir Nicholas Serota will open Lawson Park, a £1.3m headquarters and residency centre for Grizedale Arts, which occupies a spectacular location overlooking Coniston Water in the Lake District.
The project has been funded with the support of the Arts Council Lottery, the Northern Rock Foundation, Foyle Foundation, Low Carbon Buildings Trust and the Lake District National Park Sustainability Fund.
Lawson Park is a farm 200m above Coniston Water, on the western edge of Grizedale Forest.
It has had a varied life since its establishment in 1338 as an iron works by the Cistercian monks of Furness Abbey.
For many years it was owned by 19th Century artist and critic John Ruskin, from the adjoining Brantwood estate, and it even features in Richard Adams’s book, Plague Dogs, as an animal testing station.
It has now been transformed in an imaginative scheme by Edinburgh architects Sutherland Hussey.
A new building has been created within the old walls of the farm, providing facilities for residencies, research, conferences, events and community projects.
The new site – part farm, part art project – aims to be the model for a new kind of art institution which works beyond the normal structures of the art world and addresses issues in rural communities.
Moving out of the Grizedale Forest visitor centre to Lawson Park marks an exciting new phase in the development of Grizedale Arts. Over its 30-year history, it has evolved from sculpture park and residency centre for artists to its current status at the heart of an international network of projects.
These projects have connected distinct yet comparable villages in Cumbria, China and Japan.
Several Grizedale artists have been commissioned to produce works to celebrate the opening of the new building, including Adam Chodzko, Ryan Gander, Guestroom, Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane, Olaf Breuning and Pablo Bronstein.
Beyond the hosting of artists the farm is also designed to work with local groups, with more than 10 acres of gardens, plus farmland and woodland.
The building design is derived from the old idea of the manorial farm as a shared public space and the scheme includes a community kitchen and library.
The new centre will house the Lawson Park collection of furniture and decorative arts that tells the story of British design and its relationship with local styles from 1820 to the present day.
Deputy director Alistair Hudson said: "This is a very significant new development, not just for the Lake District but also for the UK art scene at a time when the rural situation is starting to take centre stage in world culture.
"Lawson Park is often seen as a remote and picturesque hill farm, but this marks a new chapter in its life as a working building that combines rural issues with the latest in international contemporary art.
"Lawson Park is not a visitor attraction but a place to work, not just for artists but for people who want to get involved in changing culture and the environment."
