Finding Common Ground
Cymru 2024-2025
An exploration as part of a year long Future Wales Fellowship opportunity supported by
Arts Council Wales and Natural Resources Wales, with Peak Cymru, National Trust, and Elan Valley Trust.
The Future Wales Fellowship was an 18 month invitation to go deep with creative research into our relationship with nature – whilst acknowledging of course that we ourselves are nature.
During the Fellowship 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 I worked with these materials by hand – skin to skin, to meet them in a tactile relationship. The evolution of a coracle provided the framework for this enquiry.
My research process 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 was guided on my journey by the question “what can you show me?” which 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 (as suggested by the coracle), following where the currents took me and allowing tributaries to suggest new directions. I’ve been welcomed onto farms, woodlands, into homes and to participate in local festival, and into wisdoms and teachings from many different perspectives over the course of the Fellowship, all of which bringing into question the relationship of artist, participant, and expert, and the blurring of the lines between these categories.
The drift 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 permaculture design 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 (of climate crisis), to acknowledge the hugeness of which we are a part, and to rediscover the wild within.
The coracle is built from a willow frame, to my own design that is based on an early coracle on display at the Ironbridge Coracle Centre. The design evolved from a desire to carry it lightly over distance, to be held within it as a nest, and to be able to shelter under it. Materials were sourced as locally as possible – the resting place within is a mat woven of elm bark and bast from Lime Kiln Covert, tied together with lime bast cordage; the covering is linen, following a flax growing experiment with seeds from Caernarfon and a processing workshop with natural fibres expert Allan Brown; the waterproofing is pine resin and lanolin, inspired by the Moelyci woodland. Woven throughout are treasures offered by the land during the making and journeying process.
Over time, the coracle led me on journeys to the edges of day and night, land and sky at Moelyci; to the shifting edges of land and sea at Newborough; and on a journey full of human conversations through Cwm Idwal. It became a tool for connecting people with place and rediscovering a more sensorial language and way of being in the world, and it offered both a safe space to exist within the elements and a vessel to travel with to engage in conversations and with the larger natural forces around us. In May 2025 the coracle visited Ynys Enlli, where it was offered as an immersive experience for visitors and residents on the island to rest and dream within for a short time, surrounded by the wild energy of the island. The journeying has taken its toll on the craft, and I have regularly undertaken necessary rituals of care, patching the fabric damaged by sharp slate and kissing gates; re-waterproofing the skin, and re-weaving the elm mat that has now supported many bodies.
Following the Fellowship, I am exploring possible future journeys and audience engagement with the coracle, and planning co-building and journeying adventures with communities; as well as looking for opportunities to share documentation and fragments of the journeys already undertaken. Drawing on what the experience of journeying with the coracle has taught me, I am developing a series of walking scores and guided walks to the Edges of place and time, and continuing research into how these might help us form a deeper relationship with the living world we are a part of.
Fellowship work in progress was shared at Stiwdio Cadnant in Caernarfon on 27th March, alongside Manon Awst, and fragments of the work were shown at The Stables Gallery in Folkestone during OpenArt 2025.
A publication that features the work of all eight Future Wales Fellows can be found here.
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.
A surprise radiance of light and energy pours out as ...
All our edges blur, mine, the mountain, and the sky.
Photos 3,5, 7 & 10 by myself, 6, 8 & 9 by Ben Walker, and 1, 2 & 4 by Joseph Conran
Huge thanks to those who hosted me and shared their expertise during the year: the Blockey family at Old Chapel Farm, Llanidloes; Tim Cumine; John Whitely and Glan Faenol National Trust woodland; Steve Niner at Ffarm Moelyci; Nim and Pete Robins at Cynefin farm, Nevern; and Sue Gill & Gilly Adams through their Rites of Passage course.