Made in and around Thrapston, a market town in rural Northamptonshire, The Great Bear explores narratives of labour and landscape in the English Midlands. Historically rural, with a strong farming identity, the area’s close proximity to arterial road networks has sparked a growing logistics economy with an international workforce. Intensified by its focus on the young, activities and subjectivities of work entwine with patterns of seasonal change, the landscape both source and product of working life. The Great Bear is part of WORK: four artists’ films that explore contemporary working lives in the middle of England, by Dryden Goodwin, Jenny Holt, Esther Johnson, and Adam Lewis Jacob. Made in Derby, Thrapston, Birmingham and Bolsover, the WORK films consider: the rhythms of a care worker’s day; traditional and new rural working lives – farming, forestry, and international logistics; Birmingham’s Trade Union Resource Centre film archive and collective activism; untold stories of the impact on individual lives of post-industrial economic change. Developed and produced over two years, WORK is a collaboration between: Animate Projects; QUAD, Derby; Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, Thrapston, Northamptonshire; Vivid Projects, Birmingham; and Junction Arts, Chesterfield. WORK is supported by Jerwood Arts and using public funding by Arts Council England.