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Year

2022

Happy 26th Birthday Mr Otto!

We are celebrating a very happy birthday this week at Harewood. 

Mr Otto is one of our Humboldt Penguins and can be found splashing about in the Penguin Pool located within Harewood’s Bird Garden.

Today he turns 26 years old, which is a fantastic age for a Humboldt penguin. Congratulations Mr Otto!

Like the other male penguins in our enclosure, he can be spotted wearing a coloured tag on his right wing. Each penguin has a red, yellow, blue, green or black coloured tag. These tags are located on the left wing for a female and on the right wing for a male. When next visiting the site please do make sure to pop down by the Penguin Pool and see if you can spot him.

Natural Habitat

Humboldt penguins originate from the coastal Peru and Chile. They face many threats in the wild such as the destruction of their habitats, fishing and hunting. The penguin enclosure here at Harewood was specifically designed to replicate the coastline of Peru in South America. The swimming pools are different depths and areas, with a rocky slope leading to a plateau.

Eating Habits 

When in the wild Humboldt penguins would feed on anchovies, squid and sardines as these can be found off the West coast of Peru, our penguins here at Harewood are fed whitebait and sprats, which are very similar in size.

Want to see Mr Otto in person?

Why not join us and meet our famous Humboldt Penguins while exploring Harewood’s Bird Garden.

While on site you can enjoy our penguin talks everyday and there is even the opportunity to get up close and feed these wonderful creatures with one of our Penguin Feeding Experiences.

Visiting as a school?

As part of our educational programme, pupils will be offered an unforgettable learning experience as they get outside the classroom and explore the Harewood Bird Garden in a session designed to stimulate a curiosity for the natural world. Our Learning Team have been hard at work redeveloping this beloved educational session and we hope to see you in 2023.

Meet the Penguins session >>

Meet the Birds session >>

Learning Outside the Classroom

The Learning Team here at Harewood are thrilled to announce that we have been awarded a quality badge by the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom.

This year our team has launched a brand-new learning programme filled with exciting workshops and tours for educational groups. We are so pleased by the positive reaction to the new programme, which has been rated consistently ‘Oustanding’ by teachers, and look forward to what the next few months will bring.

 

What is the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom?

As a registered charity the Council are champions of learning outside the classroom.

They believe in equal opportunities for all children to experience life outside of the classroom. They wish to ensure that more young people have access to life changing educational experiences.

Find out more about the council for Learning Outside the Classroom at https://www.lotc.org.uk/

 

Sandford Award

Harewood is also recipient of the prestigious Sandford Award, which celebrates high quality heritage education and provides independent quality assurance to sites that run formal education programmes in the UK and Ireland.

Find out more about the Sandford Award at https://www.heritageeducationtrust.org/about-the-sandford-award 

If you would like to speak to a member of the Learning Team about our current programme they can be reached at learn@harewood.org.

 

References

Learning Outside the Classroom Website – https://www.lotc.org.uk/

An Outstanding October at Harewood

Primley Wood Primary

It’s certainly been an exciting start to the new school year, as well as launching several brand-new workshops we’ve also been busy delivering some old favourites too!

October saw us teach the first of our Harewood & the Transatlantic Slave Trade workshops. This session has been designed to highlight Harewood’s historic links to the horrific practice, as well as discussing the trade and its wider legacies. Harewood is dedicated to an Open History and acknowledges the importance of addressing these important topics with all ages.

We have been so pleased to have been rated outstanding by all of the schools who have taken part in our new workshops so far. All of the positive and lovely feedback has been greatly appreciated.

”The workshop was fantastic as not only did it explore the slave trade, it also had strong links to Harewood House and its own challenging history. The children were able to look at replica sources and documents during the session which we would not have had access to if teaching the lesson at school. The workshop was also cross-curricular as we did some map work based on the location of different plantations, some investigative source work and had lots of discussion. We then had a tour of the house by the staff members whose expertise shone through.”

-Teacher, Primley Wood Primary, October 2022

If you would like to find out more about available workshops, our friendly Learning Team can be reached via email at learn@harewood.org.

Primley Wood Primary

The Ferry at Harewood

Why isn’t the Ferry running?

Harewood’s Ferry made its maiden voyage in June 2018 and has carried thousands of Harewood visitors every week between the Bird Garden, Bothy and Walled Garden.
In May 2022, the water level in the Lake started to decrease due to low rainfall throughout winter and spring. In June the water level reached a point where the Ferry ran aground and could no longer run. The mud banking you can see around the Lake has not been seen since the Lake was last drained many decades ago.

When will it be operating again?

Unless the weather for the remaining half of the year features a consistent and heavy amount of rain, it is unlikely that the water level will reach a point where we can operate the Ferry again until 2023.
Harewood House Trust, the charity that looks after this site, and the Harewood Estate are working with the Environment Agency and Leeds City Council to ensure the health and wellbeing of Harewood’s wildlife that rely on the Lake. The Trust and Estate are also looking at the Lake’s infrastructure to help plan and mitigate against the impact of climate change, including prolonged periods of dry weather.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

 

Harewood House Trust Appoints Darren Pih as Chief Curator and Artistic Director

Pih joins the Harewood House Trust executive team from Tate Liverpool. In this new role, he will lead the charity’s award-winning exhibition programme, and care for the museum’s outstanding collection of painting, decorative interiors, furniture and porcelain. His work will further Harewood’s purpose to make heritage relevant, using the collections and landscape to help shape a more sustainable world, unlock people’s creativity and enrich lives.

Over the past five years, Harewood has received universal recognition for its innovative programming including the Harewood Biennial alongside its new Craft Spotlight and Open History series addressing the urgent issues of our time from equality, diversity and inclusion, and social and environmental issues prevalent in society today. Darren has worked across exhibitions that have featured many of today’s leading artists, has toured major exhibitions for Tate Liverpool around the world, and has commissioned several new works. Most recently, his Radical Landscapes exhibition explores climate emergency, trespass and social and cultural change through a century of landscape art – an exhibition which shares Harewood’s values entirely.

With a history of collections care and producing exhibitions closely linked to Harewood’s programming ambitions, trustee of Harewood House Trust Iwona Blazwick OBE commented:

‘Pih’s deep engagement with modern and contemporary art will bring a dynamic new perspective to Harewood, connecting its distinguished history of arts patronage with the present. I can’t wait to see what his curatorial vision will contribute – not only to Harewood’s great legacy but the wider Yorkshire art scene’.

Since 2017, Harewood – which reached a record-breaking 250,000 visitors in 2021 – has been pushing the boundaries of its programming under the leadership of Jane Marriott, building on the Trust’s and the Lascelles’ commitment to acknowledging the estate’s colonial past for over 30 years, and exploring and provoking conversation around societal issues that affect us all. This commitment remains stronger than ever and is central to the Trust’s programming aims, the work of its staff and volunteers, and working with the communities in and around Leeds.

Trust Director Jane Marriott comments of Darren’s appointment:

‘I am delighted to welcome Darren as Harewood’s first Chief Curator and Artistic Director. This role epitomises our ambitions to reimagine the country house for the 21st century with bold, exciting and innovative programming. Darren brings a thoughtful approach and excellent track record, in combining the care of historic collections with the work of contemporary artists, in order to develop our ambitions as a charity and museum.’

Darren Pih’s first major exhibition under his curatorial lead will be Harewood’s second Craft Spotlight, to be announced later this year, and a Harewood ‘year of play’ to coincide with Leeds 2023 celebrations. On his appointment, he said:

‘I am delighted to be joining Harewood and contributing to its ambitions by leading its exhibitions programme. Harewood and its history make it a unique site for presenting art and ideas that engage with many of the most urgent issues of our time, including environmental responsibility, colonialism and social inclusion. It’s a fantastic opportunity to create new knowledge around its collections, by bringing contemporary and modern art into dialogue with the heritage and history of Harewood.’

Download the full press release including editor’s notes >>