Exhibition to reveal plans for Portland Quarries (From Thisisdorset)

Exhibition to reveal plans for Portland Quarries

1:40pm Monday 29th June 2009

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PLANS to breathe fresh life into quarries on Portland are going on show at a new exhibition.

Ideas include an amphitheatre and arts spaces cut into the rock and a Walk Through Time attraction at Independent Quarry on Tophill.

The attraction, behind the Drill Hall, in Easton Lane, will allow visitors to walk through 250 million years of fossils and caves.

Plans will feature in a Portland Sculpture Quarry Trust (PSQT) exhibition, which opens at the hall on July 4 and continues until October 3.

Hannah Sofaer, who is one of the project leaders, said: “Proposals for Independent Quarry include a geological interpretation pathway with 18 geological rooms where the fossil record is reinstated at the correct level, and a wildlife corridor leading to a spiral earth mound rising from the base of the quarry to above ground level, the present day, and into the future. “Here children will be able to create work over the next 50 years that expresses their aspirations for the future, awareness of environmental change and endangered species as a means of highlighting global issues to effect change, both local and international contexts.”

The exhibition will include an aerial view of Portland beamed onto the floor.

There will be images of PSQT’s work on the island to keep the stories of the quarries alive as well as archive footage and photographs.

Islanders, artists, geologists and scientists have been filmed for short pieces of footage, telling how they have been inspired by the stone.

They include 100-year-old George Davy, who started out in quarrying in 1924 and still remembers the songs of the quarrymen.

Part of the exhibition will focus on the plans to build a school for the whole island.

There will also be the first chance to see film of percussionist Evelyn Glennie playing stone instruments.

Councillor Brendan Webster, Weymouth and Portland brief holder for leisure, tourism and community facilities, said: “This is going to be an incredible exhibition, spanning not only the 26 years that the trust has been working with the island but also charting the progress of quarrying since the stone was first used in the 1700s.

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