A new community-curated exhibition, The Shape of Things: Our place in a changing climate, has opened at Penlee House Gallery & Museum.
Local environmental groups, such as Sustainable Penzance, the RSPB, Growing Links - Street Food Project, Cornwall Climate Care and Mounts Bay Marine Group have selected works for inclusion in the exhibition.
These highlight issues such as rising sea levels, more frequent storms and extreme weather, warming oceans, and the challenges these changes pose for the environment, local wildlife and their habitats, the communities living in Cornwall and our industries, such as fishing, farming and tourism.
In addition to the historic paintings and photographs, the exhibition features new artworks created especially for the show by local community groups, children and young people at 57 different community workshops run by Penlee House.
Groups such as the Women’s Institute and Penlee’s Arts and Health Groups, have joined young people from Mounts Bay Academy, Humphry Davy School, Truro and Penwith College and children from four local primary schools to create new pieces on the theme of climate change.
Working with local artists and some of the environmental groups, the groups and schools have responded creatively in a variety of ways to the images chosen from the collections at Penlee House.
There was even an impromptu land performance by eco synchronised swimming troupe Out of Sink outside the gallery whilst everyone waited for the doors to open.