Cedars and St Mary's SHINE at Baltic

Gateshead Heritage @ St Mary’s provided the inspiration for children at The Cedars Sports College to create wonderful, award-winning stained glass designs together.

Now those amazing Angel windows - together with photographs of the project - have been exhibited at the Baltic as part of the SHINE Festival, which celebrates creativity in young people across the country.

As the mother church of Gateshead, for hundreds of years St Mary’s used to have stunning stained-glass windows that were locally designed and made. Unfortunately those windows were destroyed in successive fires during the building’s history.

Pupils at the Cedars visited St Mary’s - now home to Gateshead’s Heritage centre - and worked with Education Officer Richard Stevenson. Together they handled artefacts from Gateshead’s industrial and domestic past and created proggy mats.

Inspired by the colours and light that used to brighten up St Mary’s, the children and staff created windows to take back to school using paper, tissue, card and plastic. Back at school, the creativity continued, with new windows designed using the Angel of the North - which can be seen from the school - as a template.

Pupils and staff from The Cedars celebrated their SHINE award at an event held at Baltic on Thursday 9th July 2009. The award, a Lego model of Baltic, was given in recognition of the hard work, achievement and creativity on display.