Nurturing Nature exhibition at Keswick Museum celebrates our relationship with green spaces

Keswick Museum and Art Gallery's new exhibition, 'Nurturing Nature: Physical and emotional convalescence in Keswick’s outdoor spaces', is running from July 17 2021 to July 10 2022.

The project, exploring peoples' relationship with the outdoors in Keswick and the seven Derwent parishes, will use objects from the Museum’s collection to tell stories of how others have used these same spaces throughout history.

Pieces on display will include creative responses to the landscape and objects relating to Blencathra Sanatorium for tuberculosis, as well as photographs showing how locals engaged with the outdoors during recent lockdowns.

The exhibition will also explore the founding of Fitz Park to the Keswick & District Footpaths Preservation Association trespasses which ensured a public right of way to Latrigg.

Keswick Museum curator, Nicola Lawso, said: "We're exploring lots of different stories that are all linked to how people have needed these green spaces, how people have fought for it in Keswick, and how people have used it over time and over recent lockdowns.

"There was a group of people around at the turn of the twentieth century who were thinking about conservation, thinking about public access to green spaces, and really fighting for that.

"We owe so much to them.

"The idea that private landowners in the nineteenth century could have cut off public access to Latrigg is unthinkable now.

"So many people find that access invaluable.

"It's been vital to us over the last year to have free public access to green spaces for our physical and emotional health."

In August the Museum will launch a temporary outdoor Connections Gallery in the Museum’s courtyard.

The exhibition will also be a place of recovery for the Museum.

On a work-in-progress wall, staff will list achievements the Museum has made – however small or large – in its recovery from the damage Covid-19 has done.

Visit keswickmuseum.org.uk.