Portland Sculpture & Quarry Trust

The Trust's Achievements

Drawing on our experience of the landscape and its cultural heritage of stone, the Trust has developed widely accessible programmes, to ensure that traditional skills and knowledge of working stone in its place of origin are kept alive. Towards this the Trust has saved Tout Quarry - an historic quarry environment, through developing a creative and educational resource that provides access for many people to interpret the environment through sculpture, industrial archaeology and the hands on experience of working with a world famous stone, used in both architecture and sculpture / carving. The Trust has:

• established a programme of sculpture residencies in Tout Quarry that attracts local, national and international artists
• developed a living archive of audio-visual documentation consisting of interviews, demonstrations and discussions with the Portland quarrymen and stonemasons. This material is an irreplaceable record of the last of a line of generations, whose hand skills and knowledge of stone have shaped both the environment of Portland, and great buildings in cities throughout the world
• developed a forward-looking approach to 'living teaching' within the quarry environment for the community and general public; enabling the handing on of the Island's cultural heritage of stone to a younger generation, as well as bringing many visitors to Portland
• established a well known national and internationally recognised centre for stone carving and sculpture in Tout Quarry, including designing and building a new open air workshop that provides an opportunity for individuals of all ages and backgrounds to explore their creativity, in a context of lifelong learning as well as educational programmes for schools, colleges, the general public and special educational needs
• provided open access workshops and projects in contrasting quarry environments through the visual and performing arts and developing group projects involving schools and community that encourage collaborative work across disciplines, e.g. sculptors, poets, stonemasons, quarrymen, architects, palaeontologists
• developed and delivered new courses combining arts, earth sciences, cultural heritage and the stone industry - bringing the first ever validated higher education programmes to Portland, in partnership with the University of Brighton. (PhD research, a popular BA elective that runs three times per year, and a one-year MA by Independent Project based in the Drill Hall)
• maintained traditional skills through projects with retired Portland stone masons and quarrymen.
• enabled the development and exploration of new concepts for artists working across a number of art forms in relation to the quarry environment, promoting a greater awareness of the interrelationship between art and place
• organised exhibitions, symposia, seminars and publications on the Trust's project
• encouraged a wide audience to develop their creative potential through working with Portland stone, leading to new projects and commissions being undertaken

Future Development and Objectives

The Trust has a vision of the role of the arts & heritage in landscape, bringing people together to explore our place in landscape, and engage people with it. This centres on the cultural heritage, artistic, environmental and educational programmes in three contrasting quarry environments, Tout, Independent and Jordan. Here, landscapes relating to geology, sculpture, the arts, architecture and Portland's cultural heritage of stone working, will be preserved, documented and newly created. These programmes will be based in the Drill Hall, a study and interpretation centre, where a 'living land archive' will be housed. A Business Plan supported by South West Arts, for the development of the Drill Hall and Independent Quarry in relation to Tout and Jordan Quarries has been drawn up and will be implemented over a five-year time scale.

The Drill Hall is a distinctive late 19th Century Portland stone building with castellations. The building has an area of 3,000 sq ft, and is adjacent to Independent Quarry, now at the end of its working life after 150 years. The Drill Hall is linked via a circular walk to a network of contrasting quarries, and will provide interpretive exhibitions and displays on the heritage of Portland stone.

In the longer term the building will be linked to Independent Quarry via a proposed interpretive pathway. The journey descending to the quarry floor will tell the story of time showing the geological formations and strata revealed by the quarrying process. On its ascent from the quarry floor back to the building the journey will illustrate the range of traditional techniques and uses of Portland stone, with architectural detail.

The building will be:

• an important focus for a multi-media exhibition of the Island's quarries and heritage of stone
• the location and display of a 'living land archive' - to include working histories, landscape and oral histories
• a venue for changing exhibitions, talks, events, creative workshops for the community, schools, colleges, universities, local and visiting
• the base for the BA Elective, and one-year MA courses supervised by the Trust and validated by the University of Brighton. The Trust's educational programme will provide a field study centre for learning exchanges between different interest groups. The bringing together of such a diversity of interest in Portland's quarry landscape and its stone, points to exciting possibilities for the future
• the site for a new build extension at rear to include practical workshops for training in stone carving in Independent Quarry.

A 'Living Land Archive' - based in the Drill Hall

The purpose of the 'living land archive' will be to provide an ongoing record, of past, present and future quarry environments, with work created and undertaken in them, and future developments continuing to add to the record. All participants in the project will be encouraged to contribute their own research and work developed on Portland, to a growing resource that can be accessed by the community, visiting public, and educational groups. The 'living land archive' will enable audiovisual records to be collated, built upon, and made available, showing:

• the use of Portland stone in art, architecture and design
• photogrammetric survey of Tout Quarry (3D digital computer model) and photographic documentation of the Portland Quarries
• the geology and geomorphology of the landscape
• the natural history (regeneration by flora and fauna)
• the quarrying heritage of Portland stone illustrating both traditional and modern techniques- e.g., pigs & wedges, wedges and scales, steam channelling, plugs & feathers, hydraulics, and more recently contemporary Italian methods such as the use of jet cutters and hydroponic bags using high pressure water, which splits the stone cleanly without explosives, dust, or damage to the stone. Recently, mining techniques have been introduced to the Island for the first time, and these too will become part of the living archive and history of stone working. This unique heritage resource on the extraction and working of Portland stone will include; the memories and oral history of the last generation of quarrymen to work the stone by hand
• artists' work, incorporating live web-cam images showing the development of concepts in relation to the landscape, and creative work in progress
• learning exchanges between people with different working interests in the stone and landscape, who can benefit from a sharing of skills and understanding.

In practice the 'living land archive' will function within the building. As the landscape depletes due to mechanization, with the loss of associated skills and knowledge, the importance of the archive will grow.