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This year, Cornwall and Devon will celebrate the tenth anniversary of achieving UNESCO World Heritage Site status through a series of inspirational events entitled Tinth.
The Cornwall and West Devon mining landscape was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 2006, and this year the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site Partnership has commissioned a summer-long set of events, which will focus on the area’s industrial innovations.
What can you see?
A host of Cornish locations and partners are set to announce Tinth events and happenings in the coming months.
As part of the programme, an immersive theatrical experience will take place on 1st July at Levant Mine, titled The Trench.
The event will simulate life in the trenches using an area of the ‘No Man’s Land’ landscape at the National Trust site, and will involve the ‘enlisted’ audience exploring and celebrating the lives of Cornish miners serving on the front line during World War One.
Additionally, a commission, Picturing The Mines, will see print makers and artists, Jesse Leroy Smith and Bernard Irwin, working with local communities to find new ways of picturing the mining heritage.
The artists will create visual maps of the mining landscape and heritage in public events in each of the ten World Heritage Site areas. Ideas from these sessions are hoped to inspire a treasure trove of images from which they will select ten to be made into copper etchings.
The final works will be presented as a permanent archive to the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site in two hand-made boxes embellished with mouldings cast in Cornish tin.
Giant ideas
In addition to the festivities, the creation of the Man Engine, a 12-metre high steam-powered puppet has also been announced for the anniversary.
Man Engine, created in the image of a Cornish miner, will stride the length of the Cornish Mining Landscape over the course of two weeks.
The brainchild of Will Coleman, of Cornwall’s Golden Tree Productions will have a real fire in his belly, a beating beam-engine in his heart and the ‘entire Industrial Revolution in his head.’
Visitors to the area will be able see Man Engine between 25th July and 6th August as it makes its journey from Tavistock to Lands’ End, walking through each one of the ten World Heritage Site mining areas.
For further information visit www.cornish-mining.org.uk.
