Teesdale is sodden, clothed in cloud, as the road rises out of the valley on to the moors where the Pennines tip into Cumbria. It’s lonely and drizzle-wrapped up here, the sense of isolation increased by the foot-and-mouth cordon travellers have to pass through before turning up to Nenthead. As men loom out of the rain shroud to spray car wheels with disinfectant, it is difficult to imagine that very soon, a few hundred feet higher, I will be sitting in a warm classroom watching children work with artists from the other side of the world.

Nenthead primary, 1,500 feet up and a long way from anywhere, claims to be the highest school in England. But within its gaunt, stone walls, the 29 pupils lead a rich cultural life. Today they are enjoying a perspective on the art of Japan available to few European children, working with musician Adrian Freedman and Noriko Takahashi, his Japanese artist wife, to compose music and make artworks inspired by Japanese picture books.

The haunting, soulful strains of shakuhachi, the traditional Japanese bamboo flute, mingle with the Cumbrian mist as Mr Freedman plays to his small, rapt audience. They have been sharing a picture book called Fly Grasshopper! by Seizo Tashima, a cut-and-thrust story about survival tactics in the natural world, and exchanging with Ms Takahashi the different ways in which British and Japanese represent animal and insect noises.

Now they are transported by the sounds of nature evoked by the flute. The artists are spending three days at Nenthead, the most remote of six schools across the North-east with which they are working. The residency projects are the centrepiece of an education programme underpinning the visit of the touring exhibition Through Eastern Eyes: the art of the Japanese picture book to the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne as part of the national Japan 2001 festival. The exhibition is near the end of its run, but the programme - called Hajimari! Hajimari! (Roll up! Begin!) - is the work of Newcastle’s Centre for the Children’s Book, and unique to the North-east.

Caroline Breyley, Nenthead’s headteacher, accepted the offer of an artists’ residency without hesitation, ever mindful of widening her pupils’ experience of life. Nenthead, a village of about 200 homes, has been stranded in its lofty position by the turn of the industrial tide. It was built by the London Lead Company in the 18th century to house lead miners, and its population has remained largely unemployed since the mines closed in the 1950s. More than half the pupils are entitled to free school meals, the village has the lowest car ownership rate in the district and local buses are infrequent.

Miss Breyley, who has taken the school out of special measures in her four-year headship, praises the Japan 2001 initiative for helping her pupils develop a more open-minded attitude. “It helps me to provide a good enough education to give these children choices in life, whether that be to stay in Nenthead or go out and see the world.”

These four to 11-year-olds are certainly open to the challenges created by their resident artists. On the first day, junior children composed poems about some of the insect characters in Fly Grasshopper!. The ferocity of this tale about a grasshopper that turns on its many predators, in which snake, grasshopper and mantis are dramatically brought to life with huge, savage, swooping shapes and slithery mud-coloured brush strokes, appealed to pupils.

Adrian Freedman and Noriko Takahashi work from the Through Eastern Eyes books, using material as diverse as Yoko Sano’s The Cat that Lived a Million Times, a story that deals with life, death, reincarnation and the power of true love; and The Little Pond by Susumu Shingu, a story without words in which the artist explores reflected light and colour in the landscape from a series of unusual perspectives. They initiate paper-making projects and encourage children to create haikus - a traditional Japanese form of poem - to accompany paintings in response to the books. Pupils have made their own books of paintings and poems, which are on show at the Hatton Gallery.

On the second day at Nenthead, the juniors spend an impressively intensive afternoon creating music with Japanese instruments such as taiko (Japanese drums), the shoko (bell), and the koto (a dramatic-looking instrument like a long harp). Their task is to compose a song from a poem about a mantis by two nine-year-old pupils, Nathan and Dean. Bells, drums and harp respond to the rhythm of the text: “long-legged and thin with knives like a tin slices through grass awesomely fast.” The piece is intended for a half-term performance in Newcastle with all the schools from the residency.

Adrian Freedman says: “People here have stereotypical images of Japan - geisha, sumo, tea houses - but by working with these books we are able to give a very different perspective on Japanese culture. Children respond to them because the images are so strong.”

Ten-year-old Catrina, one of the musicians, is particularly impressed. “I love the way the grasshopper smashes through the spider’s web (in Fly Grasshopper!) and I would love to live in Tokyo, where Noriko comes from, more than anything else. I would love to see what all the homes are like, what life is like.”

Meanwhile Ms Takahashi works with the infant children to make paper kabuko (samurai hats) decorated with brightly coloured tissue and withies (long willow strands) for insect-like antennae, which the children can wear for performing the insect dance they have learned this morning. “The children learn quickly,” she says. “They are relaxed and open and eager to know as much as they can.”

The visitors have also held workshops for teachers, creating a “toolbox” of responses for interpreting Japanese art, and Centre for the Children’s Book staff have held days of art, craft and storymaking at the Hatton Gallery for schools and families. Visitors have been asked to create 1,000 origami cranes (a Japanese symbol of peace, hope and welcome) before the exhibition ends on November 3.

Elizabeth Hammill, director of the Centre for the Children’s Book, which has funded this programme, says: “This has been a wonderful opportunity for children and adults to look in depth at the art of a country to promote proper understanding of its culture. With the world as it is at present, we need more of this.”

For details about Through Eastern Eyes and related events, contact The Centre for the Children’s Book: 0191 276 4289 or email info@ccbook.freeserve.co.ukAdrian Freedman and Noriko Takahashi can be contacted at adrianoriko@hotmail.com