Scarborough’s budding young nature photographers win national competition, highlighting UK biodiversity.
In partnership with Scarborough’s South Cliff Gardens, art-science charity Invisible Dust’s ‘Garden to Garden’ project explored the way we see, hear and experience nature – with a focus on the wonderful world of bees.
The programme ran a nationwide image competition for young insect explorers which called on 8-18 year olds to send in their original photos, videos or drawings of bees, butterflies and other minibeasts. A total of five winning entries have been selected by a panel of experts (from University of York, RSPB and the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust) from work submitted from right across the UK – two of whom (Liana, 12 and Martha, 9) hail from Scarborough.
Melissa Minter, Garden to Garden judge and postgraduate researcher at the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity at the University of York has said;
“It is so important for us all to take a closer look into our gardens and green spaces for the amazing wildlife which resides there, including our wonderful pollinating insects. I’m honoured to have helped judge the photo competition, and was so impressed with not only the photographic skills, but also the fantastic species that were being found around the UK. Well done to everyone who took part!”
Over this summer of lockdown and vulnerability, as many of us were forced to slow down and stay home, ‘Garden to Garden’ inspired young people and their families to get outside and look closer into the buzzing, fragile world that surrounds us.
Alongside the announcement of the winners on the 30th September 2020 is the release of ‘Looking at Bees’ an original short documentary film by the artist Feral Practice which explores and celebrates the bees and communities that have roamed Scarborough’s sea facing cliffs since time began. It features interviews with local scientists and a range of local wildlife enthusiasts – for example Andrea Smith of the Friends of South Cliff Gardens, who found that by ‘walking deliberately’ for her daily allotted lockdown hour, she discovered plants and insects she had never seen before.
Above all both the film and the competition are a celebration of our incredible but vulnerable natural world, at a time when we ourselves feel so under threat from the global health crisis. They seek to inspire people to cherish and nurture our green spaces, and the teeming life they hold; both for our wellbeing today but the health and of future generations.
Garden to Garden artist Feral Practice has said;
“It is a time of shared vulnerability. We are under threat from Coronavirus, and bees are under threat from habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change- and that sense of our own vulnerability has I think opened us up to a greater sense of connection to, and empathy for, other species; we’re realising our interdependence’
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