We are pleased to have a new exhibition from Sustaining Dunbar and North Light Arts at John Muir’s Birthplace.

💧Flow: From Research to Restoration
💧 17th July – 27th September
💧 Wednesday – Saturday 10am-5pm, Sunday 1-5pm
💧 Free entry

Connecting communities and river landscapes through creativity.

From a distance it might seem that the Lammermuir Hills form one of our wild places. However, if you make your way across the gently rolling landscape you will find that it is not a wilderness but a hive of industry.

For hundreds of years, we have used the hills’ resources to meet our needs for food, timber, minerals, water – and now as a site for renewable energy infrastructure.

The impact of these activities has been to create a depleted environment, in which ecosystems are suffering. The burns (streams) that flow from the hills to the sea are particularly under threat. These water courses follow the clefts and denes created by the melt water from the glaciers that retreated at the end of the last Ice Age, some 11,000 years ago.

Sustaining Dunbar, the local community development trust, has begun a project to regenerate this landscape and restore biodiversity. In partnership with landowners and members of the wider community the burns are being surveyed, and action plans will be developed to benefit the water courses and their habitats.

This exhibition, FLOW, represents a key strand of Sustaining Dunbar’s aim to involve local communities in the process of research and regeneration. North Light Arts have worked with people of all ages, from 7 to 97, to explore and respond to the environs of the Spott and Sauchet Burns in a spirit of creativity.

NLA say: “Using natural materials, we have created artworks that illustrate our desire to connect with earth and elements and the biodiversity that can thrive in the right conditions. It has been a joyful experience for us all, and we hope you will share our sense of wonder and passion to care for the natural world.”