outside it is beautiful is a new project from artists Becky Cherriman, Sarah Hehir and verity healey. Becky Cherriman is a co- facilitator and researcher (and for 2025) writer on the project, Sarah Hehir is the lead writer and co-facilitator and researcher and verity healey is the creative producer.
outside it is beautiful partners include: the Bentham Line - Leeds-Morecambe Community Rail Partnership; Culturapedia; Lancashire Library Service; Pioneer Projects; Settle Stories; Slung Low and Spot On Lancashire, a rural and library touring network managed on behalf of Lancashire County Council by Culturapedia. We are also collaborating with The Forest of Bowland National Landscape.
We are a team of artists led by verity healey working with each other for the first time and brought together by shared interests and concerns. We want to make community based interrogative and provocative work which will leave a lasting legacy for the people and landscapes and wildlife who engage with our projects. We want to encourage and promote love, care and understanding of the wildlife and natural landscapes around us and happier and healthier communities.
Introducing the artists:
verity healey is an international journalist, writer, filmmaker and photographer. She has extensive experience working with young people and people in SEND education and is passionate about social and political justice and championing human, animal and earth rights. She has worked with Good Chance Theatre, Pussy Riot, and Belarus Free Theatre, contributing a chapter on the theatre troupe for the 2023 edition of The Routledge Companion to Contemporary European Theatre and Performance. verity is an annual visitor to Kosovo's Theatre Showcase and regularly documents the festival for Howlround and The Theatre Times. Her writing has also been published by BBC Arts, What’s on Stage, The Stage, the British Council, Howlround, Open Democracy and Writers’ Rebel, the writers’ arm of Extinction Rebellion. In 2024 she contributed to the Kennan Institute's archive on documentary theatre in eastern Europe and Russia led by visiting associate professor, Susanna Weygandt. verity’s work in film includes commissions for English National Opera and the British Science Association. She is a film facilitator and also makes experimental art film & video, her latest being the work in progress, i walk therefore i am. In 2020 verity undertook a photography commission for Belarus Free Theatre working underground in Belarus, the last dictatorship in Europe. In 2024 she was shortlisted for Tweed River Culture's Wild Hearts (Border Forest Trust) artist-in-residence in the Scottish uplands in Dumfries. She also pursues personal photography projects examining where ICM photography can highlight environmental issues. She is currently undertaking research for a book commissioned by Qendra Multimedia in Kosovo which will chart the growth and development of Qendra's contribution to Kosovo Albanian theatre and independent theatre and the arts in the Balkans and beyond as a whole.
Sarah Hehir is a poet and playwright from the industrial north. Her writing explores and exposes abuse of power, shifting the control of the narrative away from authority and giving voice to marginalised individuals and communities. She enjoys working on collaborative projects with professionals and members of the community and has been writer-in-residence in schools and prisons. As a workshop leader, she uses drama and poetry to build worlds with groups, often working with other creative artists to create exciting site-specific performances. In 2013, Sarah won the inaugural BBC Writer’s Prize for her drama Bang Up and in 2016, her TV drama The Seafort was selected for the BBC TV Drama Writers’ Programme and was longlisted for The Big Break International Screenwriting Competition. She finds building audio stories by immersing yourself in a physical place is one of the most exciting ways to write. Her narrative audio poem Wild Garlic (2021) was created to be heard while walking on the South Downs and was made in collaboration with Applause Rural Touring and The South Downs National Park. She performs her poems live at events and is published in anthologies, magazines and literary journals including The Four Poets (2023) Confluence (2024) and Acumen (2024). Echoes Through the Dust appears in the Short Plays with Great Roles for Women anthology. In 2016, Zero Down was transferred from Theatre 503 to the Pleasance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her stage play, The Shadow Garden, is on tour throughout the Balkans and was longlisted for The Bruntwood Prize and The Verity Bargate Award. She wrote for BBC Doctors and currently writes for BBC Radio 4’s The Archers.
Becky Cherriman is a Yorkshire-based writer, performer, educator and facilitator, who has actively collaborated with communities, individuals, and artists since 2003 when she was accepted onto a writer development programme and undertook a community arts course. She has a breadth of experience of leading and tailoring workshops for a wide variety of groups of adults and organisations, both in person and online. Between 2019 and 2024, she worked part-time for the University of Leeds Lifelong Learning Centre leading their Creative Writing Pathway and am a resident writer for First Story. Her poetry pamphlet Echolocation and collection Empires of Clay were released in 2016 and she is often published in journals and anthologies including by Seren, Mslexia, The North, Stand and Bloodaxe. Her work also features in film and libretto, and has been named in prestigious prize lists such as the Women’s Poetry Competition, The Ilkley Literature Festival Open Mic, and the Forward Prize. Theatre projects she has written and performed for include Corseted, a 2016-17 show and fashion exhibition about radical Leeds suffragist, Alice Cliff Scatcherd, and Imove’s Haunt. This site-specific theatre project co-written with Steve Toase and people dealing with homelessness was shortlisted for The Saboteur Awards. She has a passion for writing influenced by the outdoors, as demonstrated in a Leeds 2023 commission. This involved leading a walk with a walking group around a reservoir, researching the local history and eco-system, and producing a ‘walking poem’ to document the collective experience. Other public commissions have included being Resident Poet for Morley Literature Festival, an audio poem for The Cultural Institute and poetry displayed on umbrellas for Grassington Arts Festival. Her writing often delves into the heritage of the communities she works within as with the audio trail she created as lead artist for Altofts Festival in a Day in 2016, which was based on the history of the mining town and the stories of people living there. More recently, she worked with textile artist Becky Moore to create My Sisters Hugged Me to Work, a collaborative art and poetry piece, inspired by the stories of disabled mill workers, which was commissioned by Leeds 2023 and curator Gill Crawshaw for the exhibition “Any Work That Wanted Doing” at Leeds Industrial Museum.