A look ahead to 2025 at The Burton

Our Director Harriet Cooper introduces our 2025 programme and a new approach to our opening hours.

I am really looking forward to 2025 – my first year as Director of The Burton at Bideford. I've spent the last few months planning with our brilliant team, and we're excited to share some of what is coming up this year.

We launch the year with a season celebrating the vibrancy of printmaking today in the exhibition
Other Worlds,
which presents new work by the
Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers.
Whether you are new to printmaking or a confident printer, shake off the winter blues by getting involved in our busy programme of print demonstrations, workshops, talks and family activities starting from 11 January.
See our
Exhibitions, Events and Workshops page
for details.

In March we are excited to focus on home-grown artistic talent with our much-lovedAnnual Schools Exhibition,
showcasing the imagination and creativity of young people from the local area. Alongside this, we'll premier an important exhibition of work by Bideford-bornLeslie Worth(1923-2009), a master of watercolour who brought the transient beauty of landscapes to life.

One of my personal highlights of our 2025 programme is a major exhibition by internationally renowned Bristol-based artist Emma Stibbon in May. Organised in collaboration with Towner Eastbourne,Melting Ice | Rising Tideswill bring vital conversations about the global impact of climate change to our doorstep, including new works that respond directly to coastal erosion in our own familiar North Devon landscape.

Throughout the year we will be continuing to explore our Collections and context through a contemporary lens in our annual artist commissions. Our 2024 Ceramic Artist in Residence, Florence Dwyer, will exhibit new work made in response to the RJ Lloyd Collection from later this month, and our 2024 Environmental Commission with Andy Hughes is on display until the spring. We'll be launching open calls for both commissions early in