Strike Collective x Into the Light: women+ movement shaping place-based cultural initiatives
CASE STUDY STORY:
Across County Durham, Strike Collective has emerged as a women+ led creative network that takes up space "without apology", supporting one another in a region where artists often work independently and rurally scattered. Their shared mission is clear: to bring visibility, solidarity and public art into places that have long been overlooked or under resourced.
While the collective spans 20+ members, several Strike artists have become deeply embedded in the Into the Light programme through multiple strands: PLACE Lab, Cultivate Commissions, and Durham Creative Community Fellows (DCCF).
Among them are Lizzie Lovejoy, Sarah Calavera Crook, Hazel Oakes, Ruth Flowers, Zara Worth, Gillian O’Mara, Ellen Ranson, and Jackie Stonehouse - each contributing differently, but interconnected through Strike’s collaborative culture.
A Durham University exhibition described Strike as “a supportive, inclusive creative community which celebrates the value each member brings,” laying foundations for collaborations across County Durham.
PLACE Lab: Deeply Local, Artist Led Engagement
Strike artists have been central to PLACE Lab’s work of listening, making and reimagining place with communities. For example:
Lizzie Lovejoy played a leading role in PLACE Lab Peterlee, gathering local stories in cafés and public spaces, and transforming them into flash fiction, sketches and installations celebrating 75 years of Peterlee.
Sarah Calavera Crook delivered experimental printmaking sessions with PLACE Lab and No More Nowt, bringing hands on, accessible art workshops to communities in Durham City and Peterlee.
These activities reflect Strike’s collaborative DNA: artists sharing skills, lifting each other’s practice, and strengthening the networks around them.
Lizzie Lovejoy, artist and poet
Cultivate Commissions: Deepening Creative Roots
Through ITL’s Cultivate Commissions, two Strike artists pursued ambitious, community focused works:
Ruth Flowers created Rivers Within, a ceramic exploration of the Lambton Worm folklore and the River Wear, developed through clay workshops with students and community groups.
Zara Worth produced New Shrines (Hope), a participatory installation made from community embossed gold foil “amulets,” exploring local hope, heritage and identity in Bishop Auckland.
Zara Worth, New Shrines
Both commissions are part of ITL’s ambition to increase cultural participation and build creative confidence across the county.
Durham Creative Community Fellows (DCCF): Leadership for County Durham’s Future
Four Strike artists - Lizzie Lovejoy, Gillian O’Mara, Ellen Ranson, and Jackie Stonehouse - were selected as Durham Creative Community Fellows, a competitive leadership programme led by The Bowes Museum, within Into the Light, designed to support cultural changemakers.
This cross programme presence demonstrates how Strike’s membership forms a distributed creative ecosystem embedded throughout ITL.
Taken together, the Strike artists’ involvement across ITL suggests a powerful truth: regeneration is not the result of isolated projects, but of interconnected people.
Strike members bring different mediums, like ceramics, illustration, murals, storytelling, and participatory design, yet their shared values of care, community and co creation make their impact far greater than the sum of its parts.
Through PLACE Lab they gather memories; through Cultivate they turn community imagination into artworks; through DCCF they step into roles of cultural leadership. In all these places, they model what happens when artists support one another and centre local voices: a woven, relational, hyperlocal cultural infrastructure with creativity at its core.
Nana’s House - A Living Room for Peterlee
A SPACE THAT FEELS LIKE HOME
Nana’s House, image credit: Victoria Johnson Photography
In early 2025, a disused retail unit in Peterlee’s Castle Dene Shopping Centre was transformed into something unexpected: a public living room called Nana’s House. Led by artist Ruth Flowers and co curated by Zara Worth, the space was designed to celebrate the lives, labour and legacy of older women in a town named after a man.
Nana’s House wasn’t an exhibition in the traditional sense. As No More Nowt describes it, “It wasn’t a gallery… It was something else entirely - a public living room… a space to rest, to remember, to feel welcome.”
Rooted in everyday domestic life, the installation invited visitors to reflect on their own matriarchs, through armchairs, kitchen objects, shared memories and cups of tea, reconnecting people to stories that often go unrecognised in public cultural spaces. This ethos aligned with Into the Light’s PLACE Lab Peterlee, which aims to test new ways of making, connecting and imagining within left behind town centres.
TWENTY ARTISTS, ONE LIVING ROOM
Nana’s House began with 11 artists but quickly grew to 20 creatives, many of whom were from Strike Collective.
Strike members contributed not only artworks celebrating matriarchal memory but also the infrastructure of the project itself, including sign writing, digital documentation, video and sound, set dressing, and museum object sourcing with nostalgic 1980s televisions.
These contributions strengthened what No More Nowt describes as a peer support network that shaped the experience collectively.
The project centred on working class women: grandmothers, carers, neighbours, the women who hold families and communities together. Art Network North East reinforced this focus, describing the installation as “a celebration of older women… shaped by love, resilience and tradition.”
Throughout its two week opening, the space became a hub of intergenerational activity - what Strike artists affectionately call “five generations in Nana’s House.” Children made portraits of their nanas; older visitors shared memories of kitchens and coal fires; others lingered to drink tea and talk.
Workshops included The Nana Exchange, sharing stories with postcards; proggy mat-making, a traditional North East textile practice; and exploring identity through clay “biscuit baking” workshops.
Through these hands on activities, personal memory became cultural heritage, and a shop once destined for vacancy became a container for joy and quiet solidarity.
Image credit: Victoria Johnson Photography
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ARTISTS HOLD SPACE
Nana’s House exemplifies how Into the Light supports place based cultural change not by imposing programming, but by trusting artists and communities to co create meaning. As Ruth Flowers explained, she “didn’t parachute in” but returned to her hometown to build something with care.
With Strike Collective deeply woven through the project, Nana’s House became a model of interconnected artistic labour: emerging artists worked alongside experienced practitioners; community members shaped content; local histories were respected with tenderness.
The exhibition demonstrated how, even short term use of empty commercial spaces, can shift public perceptions of a town centre. No More Nowt observed that it “transformed a quiet corner of the town centre into a living, breathing space for reflection and joy.”
Nana’s House affirmed that regeneration isn’t just economic; it is emotional, cultural, relational. It showed what happens when artists act not as service providers but as placemakers where multiple generations feel seen, welcomed and cherished.
For two weeks in Peterlee, Nana’s House wasn’t just an artwork. It was a home.
Strike Collective members are showing us what's possible when culture plays a central role in place-making. Huge thank you to all of the members for their ongoing support with Into the Light. Joining us on the podcast, speaking at events, sharing stories, collaborative activities - the Durham Miner's Gala and our partnership with Zara Worth was a brilliant example.
Driving forward a movement across the county!
Strike members:
DCCF Fellows
Jackie Stonehouse
Gillian O’Mara
Lizzie Lovejoy
Ellen Ranson
PLACE Lab involvement
Sarah Calavera Crook — PLACE Lab workshops (Durham & Peterlee)
Lizzie Lovejoy — Major contributor to PLACE Lab Peterlee
Ruth Flowers led a PLACE Lab funded project, Nana’s House
Cultivate Commissions
Ruth Flowers — “Rivers Within” (Harvest Commission)
Zara Worth — “New Shrines (Hope)”