Why NOW is the best time to submit your Tax Return A park of wonder for almost 50 years

The village of Bretton near Wakefield has a long and varied past from the Doomsday Survey of 1086 to the present day. Throughout the centuries there have been many changes to the landscape influenced by fashion, and social and economic developments.

In 1949 Bretton Hall and some of its grounds became home to Wakefield College, which eventually became part of the University of Leeds, the college is now closed but with the establishment of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 1977 the land was not lost for other purposes.

One of Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s great achievements has been to reunite the designed parkland providing open access to 500 acres of historic landscape. The two lakes, along with the surrounding 85 acres of woodland, were integrated into the management in 2010. This enabled Yorkshire Sculpture Park to embark upon an ambitious landscape m anagement plan.

Since the opening of the park, artists have been invited to create work directly in response to the place and it continues to be a rich source of inspiration from its heritage features to its wildlife and plants as well as the social and cultural history of the land they occupy. Decades of neglect and decline have been rectified since work began in 2010 to reinstate and enhance the woodlands around the lakes, restore historic features including the Greek Temple and most importantly, the water mana gement systems.

The success of the park owes much to the inspiration of the trustees and dedicated staff. The restored landscape provides visitors with the opportunity to explore and appreciate the setting as conceived and apply meaning appropriate to individual experiences. The continued evolution and use of space should ensure the long-term survival of this valuable landscape and develop another interesting layer in its history.

As well as the park, which is home to around 100 beautiful and unique world-class sculptures, including the newly installed Erwin Wurm Trap of the Truth exhibition, the park boasts two cafes an underground gallery, the Longside gallery and an education centre to name just a few. There are many permanent exhibitions in the park including those of local artists Barbara Hepworth a nd Henry Moore.

At the heart of Yorkshire Sculpture Park, there is a dynamic learning programme that invites everyone to be curious and make creative memories. Everyone is welcome and the education centre welcomes many schools. Visitors can pop into the Underground Gallery and test their making skills inspiring many young artists of the future. There are also dedicated CPD sessions to inspire teachers’ creativity and inspire students when back in the classroom.

Visitors can enjoy freshly prepared food in either The Restaurant at The

Weston, The Kitchen at the YSP Centre or the café at YSP Learning, prepared by on-site chefs. Every penny from ticket sales goes into support ing YSP charity

The park shop holds a unique collection of limited-edition prints, exhibition merchandise, books, and homeware both in-store and online. Staff work closely with artists to develop unique artworks and merchandise f or exhibitions.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park also boasts unique event spaces available to hire from dinners to weddings, parties an d celebrations.

You may be forgiven for wondering who is responsible for all the wonderful work that goes on behind the scenes. We caught up with a few of these people to find out exactl y what goes on.

Mark Chesman is head of estates and projects and has spent 20 years at the park, first as a volunteer for three years then taking his first job as a landscape coordinator. Mark is responsible for ground maintenance which includes preparation for installations, ensuring that the area for an installation is strong enough to hold some of the works that are craned in and incredibly heavy, all land management, gardens, parkland, woodland, three tenant farmers who farm dairy cows and sheep on the land. “I love the work, it’s seasonal so it’s wonderful to see how the landscape changes with first frosts, perhaps snow when the park looks amazing, to the first shoots of spring in the gardens and woodland to full summer and all pl ants in bloom.”

Mark is assisted by eight members of staff who generally look after all park maintenance, r e-landscaping, and habitat management as well as growing produce that is prepared and used in the YSP restaur ants and cafes.

Andy McCallum works as part of the outdoor gallery team and is a parking supervisor. Andy is responsible for all the vehicles that visit the park, gritting in the winter months as well as many other essential day to day jobs includ ing recycling .

“I joined the YSP in March 2012, helping visitors and being responsible for locking the park at night. I love my job, I used to work just on a Sunday, but I am full-time now. I have made many friends over the years, we have lots of regular visitors, some of whom come to the park daily to enjoy a walk around the installations before visiting one of the caf es for coffee.”

Andy we are reliably informed is most likely the most knowledgeable of all staff in terms of the park and its layout.

Kathryn Brame is the formal learning manager, originally joining the team in December 2018. Along with her team of five, Kathryn works with a core of 15 educators, running workshops and programmes for schools, colleges, an d universities.

Originally studying at university in bio-medical science, Kathryn was always interested in art and returned to education to undertake a fine art degree before working in theatres and galleries. She joined the YSP after relocating from Newcastle.

“We host around 30,000 school children each year,” she explained, “and hold family and adult workshops. It is important that students get creative. They learn about the artists featured in the park, visiting, and learning about each sculpture and why they were created. They have access to workshops where they can draw, paint, and make their own sculptures from clay and other materials and teachers are able to join us for career days where they are trained to return to school and deliver to their students.”

Finally, we met Amanda Peach, who is the retail and development manager. Amanda has worked at the park for 25 years joining in 1998 as a craft officer, 3 days a week. Her current role became available when the visitor centre opened, and she began work as a full-time buyer.

“I curated my first retail exhibition in 2009 and have continued since then to work on commercial exhibitions with artists and crafters,” she explained. One aspect of Amanda’s role is to find artists for the park, which includes lots of online research as well as plenty of travelling to find artists. “I love the role; it is so interesting discovering new talent as well as some more well-known ones of course. When an art installation is in place, such as the new Erwin Wurm, we then begin on merchandise to support the exhibition to appear within our onsite shops and of course online.”

These four members of staff make up a much larger team who, behind the scenes enable the park to be what it is, running smoothly so it can be enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. Without this dedicated team who love the park and the work they do, the important task of helping to keep Yorkshire firmly on the map for tourists, walkers and art lovers wouldn’t happen.

Curiosity and Wonder is a packed programme of events taking place over the summer from 15 July to 3 September. This is just one of the many programmes. The park is open daily (apart from December 24-25) 10am to 6pm with the shop, indoor galleries and food and drink outlets until 5pm.

The Weston is closed on Mondays,for more details go to ysp.org.uk