Skyline

Summer 2018 - Spring 2019

This valley is our resource

This place, this land, this future

The soil, the rivers, the hills

Imagine all we took was returned

Mining the Imagination not the land

Sustaining community identity 

Re-modelling community ownership

Let the work of re-imagining begin!

Situated at the top of the Rhondda Fawr valley, Treherbert is a village overlooked by the spectacular flat-headed spur mountain, Pen Pych. Collaborating with artist Owen Griffiths, The Green Valleys CIC and Welcome to Our Woods, Peak developed a creative engagement strategy for a feasibility study into large-scale community land transfer in Rhondda Cynon Taff – hosting conversations on climate, land ownership, empire and industry to imagine the potential of public public land surrounding the village.

In Autumn 2018, a Festival of ideas brought together over 100 community members to share a meal, a walk and conversation, transforming a former chapel and library in Treherbert into a meeting and feasting space. Sakina Sheikh, a fossil fuel divestment campaigner with Platform London, and Carys Roberts, a policy advisor with Shared Assets spoke about industrial heritage, climate crisis, empire, solidarity, resistance and reimagining. The lens of ‘Climate is Culture’ and ‘Culture is Ordinary’ facilitated community mapping – proposing shared histories as ‘fuel’ for a sustainable future. Young People contributed poems capturing future visions of their town, developed over workshops sessions with writer Emma Beynon as part of Peak’s Caban Sgriblio project (2016-2019).

Drawing on material from the ‘Festival of Ideas’, the artist team facilitated further workshops with 15 people over a three-month period, producing a landscape-scale plan for community stewardship drawing on themes of economy, ecology and the everyday. Further mapping workshops and a creative writing course were held at Pen Pych Community Primary School. An exhibition and event How to Build a Valley was held on 1st May 2019 at sull space, Capitol Shopping Centre Cardiff to link these proposals with other Skyline project sites and there were further presentations at  Senedd Cymru in Spring 2019.

We’re looking forward to collaborating on the next stages of Project Skyline in 2022.

Read Hazel Sheffield’s article on Project Skyline in the Independent here

Owen Griffiths is an artist, workshop leader and facilitator. Using participatory and collaborative processes, his socially engaged practice explores the possibilities of art to create new frameworks, resources and systems. This takes many forms, but includes reclaiming and rethinking events, rituals and spaces of dialogue through making gardens, co-designing spaces, curating events and making feasts. Griffiths explores climate, landscape, urbanism, social justice, food systems and pedagogy, creating projects and events that prepare us for the work of the future.