I developed the Mowbray Park Arts Strategy for one of the first Heritage Lottery funded projects to restore Victorian Parks, and it was one of the first times where I had the opportunity to commission a poet -Linda France, to create new work in the public realm.
Linda's poetry is featured in a pair of rose arbours by blacksmith Craig Knowles and on an inscribed slate sculpture by Alec Peever.
The rose arbour poems reads: If love was a lion, it would purr like a lion, burn bright as Orion. If love was a rose, we’d watch how it grows, learn all the secrets it knows.
The slate sculpture poem reads: In the silver mirror of the moon will you find a toad throat shining with diamonds?
The sculpture is inspired by a 17th century tale where a quarryman was working stone in the area (which is now Mowbray Park), when he discovered a toad with a lump on its head that was said to be full of shining diamonds, suggesting that there are riches to be found in the most unpromising situations.
There was a literary precedent for commissioning poetry at Mowbray Park as the local legend is that Lewis Carroll was inspired to write the Walrus and Carpenter after seeing a stuffed walrus in the Sunderland Museum. As part of the arts commissioning programe for Mowbray Park I approach sculptor Andrew Burton to produce a figurative bronze Walrus sited by the lake, and after seeing her screens at the V+A I also approached renowned Sunderland born jewellery designer Wendy Ramshaw to return to the city and design new contemporary entrance gates for the park. Mowbray Park was voted 'Best Park in Britain' in 2008.
