Geordie Bits and Pieces and South Tyne Eye Plan

 An attractive and practical solution to reducing vandalism, these two murals at Heworth Metro Station are made from virtually indestructible vitreous enamel.

Jenny Cowern's Geordie Bits and Pieces, on the station exterior, celebrates local culture through blown-up details of imagery referring to coal mining, shipbuilding, rag rugs, pieced quilts, Beilby glass etc.

Glass is the key theme - vitreous enamel is itself glass, the mural is mainly seen through bus shelter windows, and it replaces glass panels which were continually vandalised - the mural comments wryly on this, with some sections 'framed' by broken glass. 

Complementing the close-focus fragments, Mike Clay's South Tyne Eye Plan offers extensive views of the immediate locality. The 13-metre long mural, inside the station concourse, is in S-shaped sections. Like an unfolding scroll it reveals a bird's eye views of the area around the Metro track between Old Ford and Bill Quay. Recording streets and buildings in early 1990, Mike Clay's intention was to commemorate the neighbourhood and introduce an accessible link between the Metro and its client community. Both murals were installed in 1990 as part of the Art on the Metro scheme.