When was the last time you shared some love for a saltmarsh ?

Salt marshes are the weird intertidal landscape of mud andgrass, occupying huge swathes of coastline around the world, continually exchanging their existence above and below water as tides rise and fall about them.

Deluge is a new exhibition of different media curatedby Art Gene in Barrow, celebrating salt marshes through three artists’ work. Over three years, Oscar van Heek, Dana Olarescu and Linde Ex have all visited three different locations, including Barrow, to respond in different ways to the glories of salt marshes. Read a great review of the exhibition from Corridor8 here.

Behind the Scenery’s Tom Speight has been along to find outtheir stories…

What’s bright blue, lives on the harbourside in Maryport andonce was a pub called the Queens Head ?

The answer is Shipping Brow Gallery, now just over a yearold and very much now a local landmark. The building had been home to Maryport Maritime Museum since 1975 but a new lease of life dreamt up by Dolly and Brian Money has seen it turned into an art gallery with both permanent and temporary exhibitions.

Painter Jim Osborne became its second ever artist in residence in September. His new group exhibition, along with Cockermouth printmaker Jack Fawdry-Tatham and Keswick painter Celia Burbush, called Tales from Elsewhere, takes place this March.

Tom Speight has been along to find out what makes theGallery - and Jim and his paintbrushes - tick….

The Catalyst project is an ongoing collaboration between the University of Cumbria, Art Gene, the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership and the Cumbria Arts and Culture Network.

Its aim was to find three artists with Cumbrian connections– to fund them to the tune of £25,000 each, to give them an opportunity to make a substantial piece of new art connected to the county over a year. Over 220 people applied.

Emma McGordon was one of the three award winners. She’s a poet, writer and storyteller originally from West Cumbria. She’s making a film about the area she’s from – something she’s never done before.

Tom Speight met up with her on the beach at St Bees, one of the key locations in Emma’s so far untitled film…

Rosehill is a beautiful arts centre based just outside Whitehaven high up overlooking the Irish Sea.

It’s a hub for all kinds of performance and brings both local and national talent on stage. But it’s also increasingly engaging with its local community too.

CACN’s Tom Speight went along to talk to the people who are now running Rosehill to see how their plans are coming together for 2025. And we also get a chance to hear a Rosehill performance too – by Glaswegian singer-songwriter Alice Faye, on her Cumbria debut! She spoke with Tom Salmon and played him one or two of her tunes too....

Lorna Singleton is one of Britain’s last remaining swillers, a specialist in weaving baskets using coppiced oak and hazel. Using simple hand tools and ancient techniques, she creates baskets based on traditional patterns from South Cumbria as well as patterns found on her travels.

She’s based in Grizedale Forest – and as well as running her own one woman basket making business, she’s spent the last year teaching seven basketmakers the unique skills of spelk basketry on a course called Wood Water Weave.

This autumn, a beautiful exhibition by the same name has opened at Grizedale Forest Gallery, showing off the wonderful products they’ve all made.

For this episode of Behind the Scenery, Tom Speight went to talk to some of the basket makers. But he began by visiting Lorna in her workshop – to find out how she works…

Eden Project Morecambe is something that’s been talked about for some years now – the development of a brownfield sight in the Lancashire town into something like the massively successful Eden Project in Cornwall. And it’s recently been handed another £2.5m by the government, bringing the total funding to £5m, to allow design teams to get going.

But why should it matter to Cumbria ? Specifically, to the Cumbrian arts and culture sector ?

For Episode 27 of Behind the Scenery, Tom Speight went along to The Midland Hotel, itself a beautiful art deco jewel on the Morecambe coastline, where there was a gathering of businesses and organisations with an interest in Eden Project Morecambe. All organised by Carlisle based PR group Intro.

He caught up with a number of people with an interest in the project’s success and began by chatting to Si Bellamy, one of those in charge of the project, to find out about the current state of play – and why it might matter to Cumbrians....

Alison Critchlow is a contemporary British painter based in Bowness on Solway – right on the northern edge of Cumbria.

She paints mainly in oils. She’s recently been shortlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize 2024, an annual event which promotes the best of contemporary painting produced in the UK.

Alison is also one of the organisers of the annual Around the Island open studio art trail which takes place in September in north west Cumbria.

Tom Speight went to meet her in her studio – but began on the crunching shores of the Solway…

Exhibitions showing off world class art in Cumbria come and go. But none quite like the artwork of Jackie Morris.

Jackie rocketed to prominence with the phenomenal success and acclaim associated with The Lost Words, a big, sumptuous book full of her wildlife illustrations accompanied by writer Robert Macfarlane’s words.

But Jackie has been drawing and painting all of her life. And a brand new exhibition at Rheged takes you through that lifetime’s journey, from childhood drawings through to The Lost Words and its successor, The Lost Spells. Over 250 pieces of work in all.

Tom Speight went to meet Jackie Morris as the exhibition prepared to throw open its doors.