Five Bings

Five Bings is an exhibition of creative placemaking artwork inspired by mining heritage, geology and ecology by artist Yvonne Weighand Lyle and the people of the coalscapes communities. This exhibition commemorates their relationship with their local environment and celebrates a sense of place.

Five Bings is the story of the forgotten landscape of the Scottish Midland coalfields. From deep beneath the green fields of Fife, Lothian and Ayrshire, coal was extracted. The landscape was honeycombed by shafts and tunnels beneath the ground, whilst on the surface huge spoil heaps grew, known as bings.

Throughout 2024 Yvonne delivered a series of free creative workshops onsite at five bings across the Scottish coalfields. During the workshops people were encouraged to explore alternative methods of understanding and articulating the relationship between mining landscapes and place identity, social memory, and heritage through botanical gathering and cyanotype printing.

Yvonne says ‘Coal mining was a way of life and communities developed around pits and collieries. These communities have traditions and rituals and a strong sense of pride of place. At the end of mining in the late twentieth century, pit structures were demolished and now the land is derelict, or any evidence of mining is being built over and is disappearing. There is a misconception that this must mean the landscape has lost its value, however, to mining descendants, this is a monumental landscape, and the bings commemorate a lost way of life’.

Five Bings is part of the Eco- Museum of Scottish Mining Landscapes project, focusing on the former collieries and communities in the Midland coalfield reaching from Fife to Ayrshire.

About the Artist

Yvonne Weighand Lyle is a visual artist born and raised in Midlothian. She has a socially engaged practice and a proven track record of facilitating community-led and co-creation projects. Mining culture and heritage are core and central to her artwork as her family were miners for generations and this has fuelled her interest in her community history and the underlying geology of the county.  Yvonne has borne witness to the ever-changing landscape since the end of coal mining, and she is very interested in preserving their unique traditions and intangible culture.