The Sycamore Gap
Northumbria
The National Trust
2025 Design Commission
The National Trust announced a major creative commission to honour the iconic tree, which once stood beside Hadrian’s Wall and was widely recognised as a symbol of the North East.
The tree’s unexpected loss in September 2023 sparked widespread sadness and reflection across the UK and beyond.
The National Trust has invited artists, organisations, and creative agencies to produce design ideas that will use the remaining wood salvaged from the felled tree breathing new life into the site.
The commission aims to transform the story of the Sycamore Gap into a powerful symbol of hope, creativity and connection with the natural world.
The commission should also reflect the National Trust’s wider goals of restoring nature, tackling unequal access to green spaces and heritage, and inspiring millions to care for the environment.
The Tree House is studio bushi’s, Stage One Creative Services and Josh Greenfields response to this invitation.
HMYOI Wetherby
Art, Architecture and Design Educational Programmes
West Yorkshire
We believe that education changes lives
We believe that education changes lives. No matter a person’s background or life choices, education enables growth and transformation. Seeds Education works in collaboration with education providers, universities and other designers, manufacturers, and creatives to teach programmes in art, architecture and design.
Seeds Education delivers arts based programmes .that allow students to engage imaginatively with their surroundings. The artistic process develops the learner’s creative, evaluative and collaborative capabilities, whilst encouraging spontaneity, ingenuity and new ways of thinking
Workshop 1
Measure and Record
Measure
The process of enquiry will start by measuring and observing our surroundings. Measuring what currently exists helps us understand the spatial and material characteristics of place.
With no access to standard measuring tools due to security, we needed to find new and ingenious ways to measure. We measured the site by striding, counting bricks, using milk cartons, Linx bottles and body parts.
Record
The works that we made became permanent recordings of our surroundings. They helped us engage with the present, record the past and challenge the future. These works will help drive new propositions and agendas.
The recordings fostered new relationships between materials, tools, language, processes and ourselves.
Exhibit
The process ends with our guests receiving the gifts of creation, drawings, photographs and models. This provides an opportunity for the students to present their experiences and work to a wider audience.
Communicating this newfound language to others builds the emotional and social skills of our students. The exhibition was organized and curated by the students. It took place in the Visitors Center at HMYOI Wetherby.
The Gifts of Creation
Final Exhibition. Workshop 1
“Look what we’ve achieved in four weeks. Imagine what we could do in six months”
— Lewis. Seeds Education student
Project Partners
