Poetic, romantic and tactile. Inspired by the horizons and rural aspect of Derbyshire’s infamous landscapes, artists Alec Finlay, Kate Genever, Sue Halstead, Peter Kyte, Jo McChesney and Alysn Midgelow-Marsden respond with passion. Using poetry, stitch, metal, abstract colour & photography they communicate elements via their chosen media. Also showing are Sarah Jennings’ boxed birds, ceramics [with tools] by Ann Povey and Tom Butcher’s rustic domestic range.

Of particular interest to Ramblers and devoted walkers of the Peaks will be the work featured by Alec Finlay. He is an artist poet and publisher, currently based in the Northeast of England. In recent years Finlay's work has been primarily concerned with contemporary visions of nature and landscape. For ‘white peak | dark peak’ Alec has worked collaboratively with eighteen poets to create a hybrid ‘word-map’ of the Peak District. It is an innovative combination of walking, letterboxing, Japanese renga poems and audio field-recordings. Sixty-eight poems can be accessed using twenty 'letterboxes' – small wooden boxes at locations across the Peak District - covering the entire area, through the project’s website, or through a printed catalogue.

“You can experience the renga-view from the catalogue, as audio, via the 20 QR-codes printed on the front and back cover and the individual pages dedicated to each location. QR means Quick Response, a matrix barcode that accesses the web via mobile phone technology. Click your camera, hear the poem. You can experience the renga-views there, on the ‘white peak | dark peak’ website, which displays the topographical poem typographically, the lines laid-out to follow the skylines of tors, dales and hills which characterise the Peak District. You can experience the renga-views there, in the field, by journeying to any of the 20 letterbox locations dispersed through the Peak, collecting the rubber stamp circle poems the boxes contain. The audio is available there, in free download form, again via QR-code, on a plaque concealed within each letterbox. Walk to the views associated with each letterbox and you can stand where the poet stood, with the poem in your ears and the view before your eyes.”