ANTONY Gormley, the artist behind the Angel of the North sculpture, is returning to the region to work on five new projects.

Mr Gormley is to train five young artists, who in turn will liaise with 60 of the region's most talented A-level art students, to create five pieces of work.

Dubbed the Arena project, each artist will work in his or her chosen field for three months, to produce a piece of public art. The exact nature of the work is being kept under wraps until the project is launched at the Baltic gallery, Gateshead, tomorrow.

The five commissioned artists are Runa Islam, Wolfgang Weileder, Carl von Weiler, Louise K Wilson and Tom Woolford.

The £224,000 project, run by the Samling Foundation, will see the artists and students explore the definition of public art and its relationship to different environments and the wider community.

Each student will have the opportunity of experiencing at first hand how an artist researches and develops an artwork and will be tutored by the artists to help them develop their own ideas.

There will also be a website, documenting the works produced.

The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts provided a £116,790 grant towards the projects.

Other funding came from Newcastle, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Gateshead and Sunderland councils, the Northern Rock Foundation and the Samling Foundation.

Mr Gormley has another exhibition in May at the Baltic gallery, called Domain Field. It will feature 240 sculptures made up of full-body casts from naked volunteers, including The Northern Echo reporter, Gavin Engelbrecht.