Tidemarks:
Printmaking, plastics and our coastline
2 - 6 July 19

Tidemarks is a project that brings science and art together to highlight and explore the impact of plastic waste on our marine life and coastal environments.

This exhibition presents work from two different stages of the project. 

The first, funded by Ernest Cook Trust involved Northern Print working with Key Stage 2 pupils in Coquet Park First School and Rockcliffe First School in Whitley Bay and Whitehouse Primary School and King Edward Primary School in North Shields.

For the second stage, Northern Print worked with young people from the Silx Youth Project in Blyth, Northumberland.  This was funded by the LEAF Fund at the Community Foundation serving Tyne & Wear and Northumberland.

Both projects involved the participants making prints from waste plastics collected during beach clean-up sessions which were used to create collaged printing plates. These were then inked up and printed using a press thereby creating textured collagraph seascape prints.

During the beach cleans participants witnessed for themselves the kinds of plastic waste littering our coastlines. Teachers from the schools in North Tyneside accompanied pupils to local beaches along with Northern Print team members. The young people from Silx visited Blyth beach, accompanied by Northern Print staff and environmental specialist Emmajo Haslam of Driftwood Life