YOUNG recruits are to help an established artist create a large feature-piece for a forthcoming museum exhibition.

Award-winning artist Toby Paterson is exploring the buildings of Peterlee, County Durham, in an exhibition he is completing ahead of a pre-Christmas launch date.

An Experiment in Total Environment will run at the DLI Museum and Durham Art Gallery, in Aykley Heads, Durham, until March.

Mr Paterson is staging a workshop this weekend (OCT 27/28) to draw on the talents of aspiring young artists from the area.

More than a dozen young people have been chosen to work with him as part of the national Big Draw project.

They are attempting to produce a large artwork to be drawn directly onto the gallery’s walls.

The finished piece will remain on display throughout the exhibition.

Ros Evans, the museum’s heritage outreach and learning officer, said: “We’re thrilled to be hosting this exhibition and we’re even more excited Toby has agreed to lead the two-day workshop.”

She said it was “a fantastic opportunity” for the aspiring artists to work alongside such an established name.

An Experiment in Total Environment will contrast Mr Paterson’s new creations with the work of Victor Pasmore, the architect responsible for designing a large area of Peterlee, as it developed as a new town in the 1960s.