The Spennymoor Letters was a project I developed with Sedgefield Borough Council in 2005 when I was running Commissions North. Poet Ira Lightman was appointed through an artists competition and proposed ideas for 12 gable-ends around the town of Spennymoor in County Durham. Ira ran poetry workshops and invited local people to fill in crossword-like postcards in the shape of the ten letters of the town name, an S, a P, an E, an N etc. He then selected and edited ten poems as 2m high wall sculptures, running a trail through the town centre. A second phase of the project saw Ira working with designer Dan Civico to create 3 town laser-cut town signs made from 2000 different local surnames from the electoral roll. At night the word SPENNYMOOR shone through the laser-cut names in red.







