As part of the Our Year 2024 Crossings and Gateways Programme, artist Harriet Colours created a new mural at Normanton Market.

Throughout September 2024, Harriet worked extensively with the local community to engage people in her design process. She attended coffee mornings at the library, went along to local heritage talks, and engaged young people at the market site, to help find out how local people feel about the place where they live, and what is important to them.

Harriet also ran creative workshops with Normanton All Saints CE Infant School, in which the children helped create tapestries which were displayed at Normanton Library for 3 months. In total, 228 people helped create the artwork including the children at Normanton All Saints CE Infants School, The Well Youthy, Normanton Baptist Church coffee mornings, and Friends of Normanton Library.

The final design pays tribute to the town’s rich rail history, a cornerstone of its development. It highlights the vital role of the local colliery, with its iconic cooling and ash towers, and the town’s unique place in history as home to the North’s first postal office, made possible by the station’s critical link between Scotland and London. The foreground features exaggerated Lupins, a nod to the wildflowers that once thrived along the railway sidings, symbolising nature’s harmony with the town’s industrial past. This mural has been painted using graphenstone lime-based paints, which absorb carbon dioxide. This in turn helps to improve air quality and will reduce this building’s carbon footprint over time.