Yorkshire Dales

For their Nature Calling project, Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority commissioned Shape North to create ‘Nature’s Reflections’ for young people from three schools in the Borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire: Batley Girls High School, Woodley School and College and Ravenshall School.

The programme saw the young people engage in a series of walks in nature alongside artists, gradually moving further into the National Park from Marsden Moors to Stoodley Pike and finally Malham Cove.

Every visit encompassed walks into the environment with a range of creative activities both whilst out in nature and later in a base within the area.

Throughout their walks, the young people enjoyed creative activities: sketching the world around them, capturing moving grasses, the rippling of water and the textures of stone; using their senses to gather words and observations as inspiration for haiku poetry; using analogue cameras to frame fleeting moments of beauty within the landscape, or foraging for fallen natural objects.

Back at the local base they enjoyed drawing and sketchbook journaling, creating clay birds in response to the bird calls heard on the moors, working with Madiha Ansari of Song Geet Choir to transform their nature walk into an interactive musical storytelling and poetry experience, or using their found objects to fill baubles and create delicate cyanotype prints – bluetoned impressions of nature’s details.

Through these different forms of making, the young people learned to view nature through a different lens — one of curiosity, creativity and care. Together, these works tell a shared story of discovery, imagination and belonging. They remind us that art is not only a way to look at the world, but a way to feel part of it.

Young people also experienced a range of arts workshops back at school after the visits. Students at Woodley College embedded their cyanotype prints into jewellery casings to sell in their college owned shop. Madiha turned the words and poetry created by the girls at Stoodley Pike into a song, which the young people learnt to sing together.

The programme concluded with the Nature’s Reflections Celebration Day on 23 October 2025. Everybody involved in the Nature’s Reflections project came together to enjoy a walk to the beautiful Eastergate Bridge in Marsden. There they were serenaded by the young people from Batley Girls’ High School, led by Madiha, with a song written from the young people’s poems in response to the visit to Stoodley Pike (see below for the lyrics).

The rest of the day was spent at the North of England Centre for Music and the Arts, the perfect venue to exhibit the wealth of art work produced by the young people and artists during the project - paintings, ceramic birds, painted screens, film and photographs, cyanotype banners, natural object baubles, poetry, wooden word mobiles and more. The young people’s sketchbooks depicted their journey through the different environments, whilst everyone there was invited to choose a dried flower, leaf or natural element that reminded them of their own connection to nature and add it to the growing artwork, leaving behind a small piece of their own story, becoming a part of the exhibition. Finally everyone wrote their own personal pledge to nature - promising to nurture and protect that which had given so much to us throughout this project.

A huge thank you to all the practitioners who supported the young people to create such incredible work:  Stephanie Bartholet, Madiha Ansari, Sarah Branson, Daniel Johnson Gray

Whispers of the Field

Grassy, green, muddy, rough,
spikey, scratchy, bumpy, strange.
The earth beneath my feet
holds stories of footsteps long gone,
memories pressed into soil and stone.

The air smells of morning,
warm and earthy,
like summer fields stretching forever,
like grassy relics of days remembered.  

I follow the gentle hum
of unseen birds and butterflies,
their wings brushing sunlight
against the vibrant green.
The wind carries whispers—
soft messages tangled in leaves,
tickling my ears, cradling me
like a secret promise:
“Keep going. You are free.”

Hard, soft, fiddly, vibrant, bumpy.
Pointy, thin, spikey, warm.
Green, yellow, muddy brown, sky blue.
The ground beneath me shifts—
sometimes slippery, sometimes firm,
always alive with history.

I feel it pulse beneath my feet,
a heartbeat of the world,
of sheep wandering, of wind swirling,
of centuries held in grass and stone.

I run, I pause, I breathe,
letting sunlight pour warmth over me.
The field stretches wide and endless,
a place where time slows,
where nature hums a lullaby
only my heart can understand.

The wind moves through me,
through my hair, my arms, my thoughts,
whispering stories of hope and courage.
I am tired, I am warm, I am alive.
I am here. I am me.

Grassy, rough, soft, spicy, bumpy.
Warm, tired, happy, free.
I walk, I listen, I remember.
And the world listens back.

Lyrics composed by Madiha Ansari using the words and inspiration of the young people from Batley Girls High School, following their visits to the Pennine Way and Stoodley Pike