Quaking Houses: Art, Science and the Community: A Collaborative Approach to Water Pollution

By the late 1980s, the small former mining village of Quaking Houses in County Durham had passed through some hard times. The local pits had closed, the village had been starved of investment, and a huge opencast mine was eating away at the surrounding countryside. When a nearby road project disturbed an old spoil heap, severe pollution of the local stream, the Stanley Burn, by acidic toxic water from the heap proved the last straw for the people of the village." "They began to campaign vigorously for the stream to be cleaned up, and Quaking Houses describes how their determination led to the setting up of a unique collaborative project to design and develop a pioneering wetland area that would clean up the waters of the Stanley Burn - the first use of this form of passive technology in Europe." "Quaking Houses examines how the project developed and describes both the successes and the pitfalls of a collaborative project involving very different traditions and cultural backgrounds.