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As the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ celebrates this year’s UK City of Culture, we explore how the countryside around Bradford shaped the city and its creative legacy. A story of grit and wool.

Anita Rani is back on home turf, meeting renowned environmental artist Steve Messam atop one of the Yorkshire Moors’ famed gritstone hills and helping construct one of his most ambitious installations yet – a ten-metre-high tower built from local sheep fleece. She also delves into how the landscape has inspired art over the centuries – from the rambling Bronte sisters to the Commoners Choir, who sing anthems about the landscape.

Meanwhile, Sean Fletcher follows the journey of a gritstone sheep’s fleece – all the way from shearing on a local farm to grading in Bradford’s wool depot, ready to be added to the tower installation itself. He also joins a novice bird-ringing group from Bradford College at a brand new National Nature Reserve, created to connect the urban fringes with the surrounding countryside.

In the Yorkshire Dales, Adam Henson meets some first-generation tenant farmers championing slow farming, conservation grazing and hardy hill breeds - running 280 native-breed cattle and a pedigree Texel flock across 750 rugged acres.