Finding Common Ground
Cymru 2024
An exploration as part of a year long Future Wales Fellowship opportunity supported by
Arts Council Wales and Natural Resources Wales, with Peak Cymru.
The Future Wales Fellowship is an invitation to go deep with creative research into our connection with nature – whilst acknowledging of course that we ourselves are nature. Over the past year I set out to explore material and ritual, letting the materials of the land and sea lead my inquiry, and seeking out rituals past and present that those materials offer us. I’m interested in native and sustainable materials that can teach us something about where we are and bring us into a closer relationship with place, as being within, rather than on, stewarding, conquering, or using… and in working with these materials by hand – skin on skin, to meet them in a tactile relationship. The evolution of a coracle has been the framework for this enquiry.
My research process has involved making prototypes and structures in response to materials and places; exploring possibilities for co-building and co-creating with each other as humans and with the more than human world; and exploring opportunities for healing our relationship with the rest of nature through accessible land, sea and sky based rituals and celebrations that reconnect us to the cycles of the moon, the sun and the seasons.
I’ve been guided on my journey by the question “what can you show me?” which has opened up surprise dialogues and exchanges with those I met on the way, both human and more than human; and by the mode of a drift, following where the currents take me and allowing tributaries to suggest new directions.
So far the drift has led me towards “edge” spaces of the physical and temporal; to pilgrimage and what it means to be in spiritual connection with place; to growing, harvesting and working with flax, willow, elm, ash, lime and seaweed and better understanding their life cycles; to community celebrations of hay and summer solstice and the magic of gathering with fire and music; to a permaculture design course and a weaving in of this understanding of interconnected systems and care to my artistic practice; and, to the eventual creation of a coracle as a ritual object and nest – a cynefin in which to be safe before the edge, to acknowledge the hugeness of which we are a part, and to rediscover the wild within.
The winter will be spent under the soil, going deeper into the research journey from the comfort of home, with a brief re-emergence for a community winter solstice celebration. As the research continues beyond the Fellowship, I plan to continue exploring the coracle as a tool for connecting people with place and rediscovering a more sensorial language and way of being in the world; as well as seeking out ways to bring others together in collective celebration of this land we are part of.
The sun spills and splits over the edge of the mountain, melting a warm wet yoke of yellow dawn over the ridge that makes every particle of life glow.
The soul too cracks open like an egg on an edge and a surprise radiance of light and energy pours out as a deeper, wilder self emerges...
All our edges blur, mine, the mountain, and the sky.
Photos 1,3, & 8 by myself, 2,6 & 7 by Ben Walker, and 4 & 5 by Joseph Conran