Skip to main content

Menu Lucy Barker

interdisciplinary artist and creative producer

Projects

Installation
Commissions
Collaboration
Co-production
Communities
Facilitation

Wondering Heights
- Information
- The Map
- Dance Videos
- Share
- Access
Blog
About
Subscribe
Contact
Health Stuff

instagram

Come join us on the September full moon for a FREE

Come join us on the September full moon for a FREE workshop all about entwining with nature. We'll be using small prompts to write and make art about storms, moors and the wild natures within us. Merging together Emily Brontë's novel and Kate Bush's song "Wuthering Heights", this workshop is a slow and gentle space for making and being. This is an interactive workshop where we'll be making art together and having space to do a gentle recreation of parts of Kate Bush's dance if desired.

When:
Workshop: 7th September 11am-1pm BST
Art showcase: 21st September 11am-12 BST

Where: On zoom

With: Lucy Barker and Jenny Adlem

Access: auto-closed captioning, scheduled breaks, okay to be off camera or type to communicate.

Free to join.
Please email Jenny - amessbutmaking@gmail.com - with any questions and to book your place. Please let us know any additional access requirements that you have.

Thanks to Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture @bradford_2025 for their support of this project & workshop.

Image description:
A collage image created by Lucy Barker using torn halves of a painting of Emily Brontë and a photo of Kate Bush, both white women with dark hair, so they make a single face. At the top large orange letters say Wuthering. Other small black text has the details of the event.

#WonderingHeights #WutheringHeights #KateBush #EmilyBronte #Bradford2025

This is your gentle reminder to send in your respo

This is your gentle reminder to send in your responses to Wondering Heights in the next couple of weeks. For those who just discovering it, Wondering Heights is a playful, participatory invitation to engage with the moors with movement, imagination, and creativity. Inspired by Kate Bush and Emily Brontë, you are invited to join in from the moors, your bed, garden, workplace, wherever you are, in whatever way works for you.

The project has been extended to give more time for those who need it, but we need to close it soon, so if you have something you want to create and send please do! Using the online form you can give your response to Kate Bush, Emily Brontë, the Chris Goddard Map (downloadable from the site), the walks or the moors, anonymously (if you choose), and knowing the responses will remain offline. To be super clear: we will be able to see your response, but it won't get used publicly — at all — unless you give Lucy explicit permission.

So why not take some time… What do Emily Brontë and Kate Bush mean to you? How does the wily, windy Bradford Moor make you feel?

You can respond anyway you like. Poem, writing, doodles, image, video, voice clip. However you feel moved.

Please send your responses via Lucy's website/jotform page. It’s easy to find via the links in her bio.or head to:
bit.ly/WonderingHeights

Huge thanks to Sam & Ann who sent the photo response used in the first slide, and to Alison & Karen for the second image. Thanks to dancers Izzy Brittain @mailishbell & Kate Cox @katecox.dance, both pictured Wuthering and Wondering in slide 4, for all their work on the project, and to Bradford 2025 @bradford_2025 for their support of accessible art.

Images: descriptions are in the first comment and alt tags.

#WonderingHeights #KateBush #EmilyBronte #WutheringHeights #Bradford2025 #NeurodivergentArtist #collage

We all struggle to make time to do things for ours

We all struggle to make time to do things for ourselves, to have fun, to take space to engage with creativity. Wondering Heights is a participatory project created by Lucy Barker with support from Bradford 2025, and although it began in the run up to the shared birthdays of Kate Bush and Emily Brontë, you have not missed your chance to engage with it.

Lucy has permission from Kate Bush to have this inclusive dance video on her website for a full 12 months, taking us through to May 2026. So you can keep watching, dancing, and sharing Lucy's personal website page for another 9 months of Kate Bush joy.

Chris Goddard's beautiful map will also remain on Lucy's website as a downloadable feature. If you want a printed version of one, but may struggle to pick one up in time, we can post you one - please head to the MAP link in the bio to email Natasha the project producer.

And, for accessible literary inspiration, the wonderful online resources of the Brontë Parsonage museum are highly recommended. In 1928, the Brontë Society bought Haworth Parsonage – the former home of Yorkshire’s famous literary family – to display and look after their extensive collection of Brontë items – from writing desks and letters, to clothes, furniture, and more. We’ll add a bio link to the museum part of their website where not only can you browse the treasures and history of this wonderful collection and building, but also access a detailed digital guide via Bloomberg Connects, and listen to a podcast series where each episode focuses on a single item.

So this is your permission to go slow, breathe, rest, dive as deep as you want to, and know that if you want to engage your creative brain at any point, the resources are here waiting for you.

Links to the dance videos, map and all the project resources: @bucylarker

Video description: Two women in long, flowing red dresses are dancing expressively to the song Wuthering Heights on a grassy moorland. The lyrics are captioned. Initially they are doing the moves while seated and then for the final instrumental part images of them spinning are overlaid on each other.

#WonderingHeights #KateBush #EmilyBronte #WutheringHeights #Bradf

Now the storm of Kate's birthday and the amazing R

Now the storm of Kate's birthday and the amazing Red dress weekend have passed, we have space to reflect on the beautiful Bradford Moor, which inspired these 2 iconic women to make artwork over the last century.

The moor itself is being threatened, and champion Clare Shaw @clareshaw1, organiser of The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever in Haworth, has inspired us all to think more deeply about this.

In the BBC News story about the event they said: "I've been really heavily involved in the campaign against the wind farm, which I never thought I would find myself saying.

"I'm absolutely a proponent of green energy, but green energy has to mean green energy.

"If you look at a wind farm on a blanket bog, that is a habitat for a multitude of really important creatures, on deep peat, it's not green energy - it's an energy factory located in a really important ecological and cultural site."

You can find a link to the story on the BBC website in our bio, and it also mentions the Wondering Heights project as a way for those who couldn’t get to the moors to participate in different ways. For more info on the campaign to stop the windfarm head to @stopcalderdalewindfarm

If you feel inspired by Bush, Brontë, the moors, or the ecological threat to them, please do submit your response to us through Lucy's website. The Wondering Heights project created with support from Bradford 2025 UK City Of Culture has been extended to give more time for those who need it, so you have until the end of August. A response can be anything from a poem, a doodle, a collage, a photo, video or recording. And if you submit a response, you have the choice for this to remain private or public. All the info you need is in Lucy’s bio.

Image descriptions are in the first comment and alt tags.

@bradford_2025
#WonderingHeights #KateBush #EmilyBronte #WutheringHeights #Bradford #Bradford2025 #NeurodivergentArtist #Calderdale

Making the everyday epic with Wondering Heights...

Making the everyday epic with Wondering Heights...

In case you missed the last post, the news is that we have decided to extend the deadline for your responses to Wondering Heights until the end of August.

Here by way of further inspiration is dancer Izzy Brittain @malishbell making the everyday truly Epic during rehearsals for one of the Wondering Heights dance videos.
(Video description: a white hallway a door opens and a woman in a long flowing red dress and black sash emerges dramatically with arms aloft and wafts away out of the left of the frame.)

We're extending things because we wanted to reflect feedback that people want more time to think about this project, and come up with a quiet, creative engagement.

We want to give you space to think, and breathe into the work.

We have amended the response form, so you can now give your response to Kate Bush, Emily Brontë, the Chris Goddard Map, the walks or the moors, but anonymously (if you choose), and knowing the responses will remain offline. To be super clear: we will be able to see your response, but it won't get used publicly — at all — unless you give us explicit permission.

So why not take some time… Sit. Think. Ponder. What do Emily Brontë and Kate Bush mean to you? How does the wily, windy Bradford Moor make you feel?

You can respond anyway you like. Poem, writing, doodles, image, video, voice clip. However you feel moved.

Please send your responses via Lucy's website/jotform page. It’s easy to find via the links in her bio.

@bradford_2025
#WonderingHeights #KateBush #EmilyBronte #WutheringHeights #Bradford #Bradford2025 #NeurodivergentArtist

Wondering Update: We have decided to extend the de

Wondering Update: We have decided to extend the deadline for your responses to Wondering Heights until the end of August.

Firstly, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to engage with Wondering Heights. We have had some wonderful, wonder-filled responses, however we wanted to reflect feedback that people want more time to think about this project, and come up with a quiet, creative engagement.

We want to give you space to think, and breathe into the work.

We have amended the response form, so you can now give your response to Kate Bush, Emily Brontë, the Chris Goddard Map, the walks or the moors, but anonymously (if you choose), and knowing the responses will remain offline. To be super clear: we will be able to see your response, but it won't get used publicly — at all — unless you give us explicit permission.

So why not take some time… Sit. Think. Ponder. What do Emily Brontë and Kate Bush mean to you? How does the wily, windy Bradford Moor make you feel?

You can respond anyway you like. Poem, writing, doodles, image, video, voice clip. However you feel moved.

Please send your responses via Lucy's website/jotform page. It’s easy to find via the links in her bio.

Image descriptions:
1. A collage image made from torn halves of the faces of Emily Brontë and Kate Bush, both white women with dark hair, on top of vintage brown, paisley patterned wallpaper.
2. A view across the Bradford moors in bright sunshine. A few fingers of wispy clouds are in the blue sky above a windswept grassy expanse with a few wind turbines on the horizon.
3. A section of the hand drawn Wonder Heights map created by author and cartographer Chris Goddard. It shows a section of Thornton Moor surrounded by blocks of small text and a sketch of a black and white bird with a small crest (a lapwing).
4. A screenshot of the main Wondering Heights Information page of Lucy Barker’s website. At the top are four blue and orange round graphics that say Map, Dance, Share and Access.

@chrisgoddardmap @bradford_2025
#WonderingHeights #KateBush #EmilyBronte #WutheringHeights #Bradford #Bradford2025 #NeurodivergentArtist

What a beautiful weekend of mass gatherings! On th

Happy Kate Bush Weekend to all who celebrate! If y

Happy Kate Bush Weekend to all who celebrate! If you’re looking for a way to mark the occasion then perhaps we can help…

Wondering Heights is a participatory project inspired by the literary heritage of Emily Brontë and Kate Bush’s genre-busting pop classic, and you’re invited to join in wherever and however you can – from your bed, garden, workplace or up on the moors. It runs through July and up until 24th August, and, wherever you are and however you want to get involved, you can celebrate the mass movement, and… we want to see your responses!

You can submit your Kate Bush-inspired outfits, dance moves or however you want to express yourself. It can be a photo, video, collage, sketch, poem, or sound. You can upload privately via the Wondering Heights page on our website (link in bio), or tag us on Instagram if that’s your bag!

This is for everyone. No dance experience needed. No pressure to perform. Just bring your body, your breath, and a bit of wind-in-the-hair spirit.

================================

Created by disabled artist Lucy Barker, Wondering Heights is a tiny project with a big, hopeful heart, one that aspires to be open, flexible, and inclusive. A project for every-body. Taking place across July & August as part of the Bradford City of Culture celebrations, Wondering Heights invites folk to connect with the glorious moorland around Bradford. All the info and background can be found via Lucy’s bio links.

We have a series of dance videos you can watch and learn from, there's a map created for the project that ties it into the wily, windy moors, and there are many ways to take part: through movement, imagination, walking, resting, or simply dreaming. The dance demo videos have both seated and standing versions, and you’re warmly encouraged to adapt it to suit your body and needs.

Thanks to Bradford 2025 UK City Of Culture @bradford_2025 for their support of this project.

Image descriptions: see first comment (we ran out of characters!).

[HASHTAGS] #WonderingHeights #KateBush #EmilyBronte #DisabilityPride #WutheringHeights #Bradford2025 #WutheringWeekendl #InclusiveArt #NeurodivergentArtist

𝐃𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐊𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐡 𝐚𝐬 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐚𝐬 𝐰𝐞 𝐝𝐨?

Well, this coming weekend there are many events in and around Bradford to celebrate a mass Wuthering Heights!

We are partnering with South Square in Thornton to support their fabulous event Wuthering Nights. It takes place on Friday 25th July (tomorrow!!), beginning at 5.30pm, and you can expect:

• A special appearance by the legendary Kate Butch and an opportunity to meet the star.
• Facepainting and Kate Bush inspired dress up.
• An extra special Wuthering dance-a-long.
• Karaoke, DJ and more…

Ticket link in bio. You can also find access information about their building and spaces.

AND, DON’T FORGET:
Wondering Heights is a project you can join in with anywhere, and, however you get involved and celebrate the mass movement, we want to see your responses!

Please submit your Kate Bush-inspired outfits, dance moves or however you want to express yourself. It can be a photo, video, collage, sketch, poem, or sound, via the Wondering Heights page on our website, or tag us on Instagram.

This is for everyone. No dance experience needed. No pressure to perform. Just bring your body, your breath, and a bit of wind-in-the-hair spirit.

And if you go to the party at South Square then why not send us something you make there?

Links are in our bio!

Image descriptions:
Slide 1: A video slowly zooming in to the Wuthering Nights poster (see slide 2 for more info).
Slide 2: The Wuthering Nights poster. It features a blue background with drag queen Kate Butch in the centre. Orange text includes: Wuthering Heights Dance-a-long, Karaoke, DJ and more as well as details on the time and place as in this post.
Slide 2: Kate Butch leaning through some curtains in a red dress. She is a drag queen with stunning make up that matches her voluminous deep ginger hair.
Slide 3: A striking riso print collage in blue and orange made from half of the faces of Emily Brontë and Kate Bush looking straight at the viewer. Text reads: “Wondering Heights. A micro-pilgrimage. A mass dance-meditation for every body”.

@southsquarecentre
@thekatebutch
@bradford2025

#WonderingHeights #Bradford2025 #KateBush #WutheringHeights

𝐋𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐞𝐰 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞

𝐋𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐞𝐰 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐊𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐡 𝐖𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐩!

Wednesday 23rd July, 10am -12:30, at Mind the Gap @mtgstudios in Bradford.

Come and take part in a FREE dance workshop to learn the famous Kate Bush dance from her iconic video of Wuthering Heights.

In this inclusive workshop, we welcome people of all ages and abilities. The workshop will have a focus on access, with a seated version of the dance being taught alongside the standing version.
You can learn as much or as little as you like and the class will end with everyone doing the dance together.

The link is in our bio and on Lucy's website.

If the workshop does sell out, or you can not make it, you can watch our seated and standing version of the dance for free on Lucy's website - it's easy to find in the bio.

Don't forget, we want your responses - so please share your version of the dance and submit to Lucy's website.

#WonderingHeights #Bradford2025 #KateBushDance #EmilyBronte #KateBush #WutheringHeights #AccessibleArt #DanceYourWay #NeurodivergentArtist #InclusiveDance #ArtInTheLandscape #SwishySleeves

Follow on Instagram

Installation

States of Wordlessness: Exploring Neurodivergent Space through Creative Practice

Between: A view of the sea at dawn, sideways on. The sky is soft pink and blue and is reflected in the softly rippling sea.

Between the Sea and Thee

Coastopia: A large sheet of paper is covered in bright pen drawings and words relating to what people like and don't like about their home town of Scarborough.

Coastopia 2029

A night time image of glowing perspex hexagons suspended in a leafless tree etched with ‘GOOD NATURE’, ‘CURIOSITY’, ‘BALANCE’, ‘PASSION’, ‘PRECISION’, ‘DETERMINATION’ with simple drawings to illustrate

When We Shine

© Copyright 2025 Lucy Barker

Website by Sue Johnson