‘YOU don’t often use the word ‘art’ in Barrow,” admits Maddi Nicholson.

In a town dominated by BAE Systems it is design that is prized.

But Art Gene, the community arts organisation she helped create, has spent a decade and a half changing that perception.

“We work around the social, natural and built-in environment,” she says.

“The focus is on ‘place-making’ – a fancy word for creating a physical or sense of place; a state of mind.

"We do that in a lot of different ways. We work a lot around different projects and effect change in a small way.”

Art Gene came about in 2002 as a collaboration between Maddi, from Carlisle, and fellow founder director Stuart Bastik, who had both arrived independently on the Furness peninsula as artists in residence years earlier.

The driving force was the simple need for space for their art.

“I work huge,” says Maddi, adding that the impetus was to "develop the building and a burning desire to bring in other artists”.

The name came from a play on the pop psychology in the media at the time about the potential existence of a criminal gene.

Maddi says: “The criminal gene and the art gene....we operate outside of normal society, on the edge, doing things that are quite challenging.

“Here we are on the outside of the art world, on the edge looking in."

They now employ two staff, a financial manager and a studio assistant, while working in conjunction with a myriad of other artists and organisations.

One recent project which has changed the landscape of Barrow is Fort Walney, Uncovered, a three-stage exercise which involved an archaeological dig three years ago at the First World War training trenches, the creation of a walking tour phone app, and finally an artwork, One for Sorrow..., a war memorial in the form of a gate bedecked with birds cast in iron and painted in army camouflage.

“We had an email from a man whose grandfather died in the war,” says Maddi.

“It made us realise how important that site is for people.

“Men and boys trained there, went off to war and never came back.

“It keeps a memory of something that is lost to a lot of people.

“We recognised locally that it needed to be done.”

Such work helped earn Art Gene public recognition with a community arts award from Cumbria Life magazine earlier this year and their latest project is nearing completion.

Switching from north to south Walney, in partnership with Cumbria Wildlife Trust, the Razzle Dazzle Hides aim to offer something different to visitors.

Again drawing on the area’s previous military use – Dazzle references the searchlights that were once positioned there - the two hides are named after people with strong links to the island: Nico Tinbergen, a behavioural scientist who did work on south Walney on birds, and Peggy Braithwaite, a lighthouse keeper.

They will officially open later this year.

“We want to make a difference in a small way in people’s lives, like a gift which changes the way people think,” says Maddi.