Aber Valley Outdoor Spaces
Senghenydd and Abertridwr, Wales
Project Title: Aber Valley Outdoor Spaces
Location: Senghenydd and Abertridwr, Wales
Client: Undercurrents Aber Valley Arts and Addo, with support from Caerphilly CBC and Aber Valley Community Council, funded by Arts Council Wales
Project Type: Community engagement, mapping, arts project
Date: 2021
Our approach to creative practice is demonstrated through our ongoing work in the Aber Valley where we have been engaging with the community through creativity, dialogue, and participatory activities.
In the first phase of the project, funded by the Arts Council of Wales Connect and Flourish programme, we sought to identify and make visible contemporary narratives of place, and to explore how art and cultural activity may enable communities to connect with nature and their local environment in new ways that enhance everyday life.
We engaged with local individuals and community groups through participatory activities to develop creative methodologies for exploring outdoor spaces, including making postcards from ‘My Fantastic Aber Valley’, a Guide to Getting Lost and a Photo Challenge competition. Walking and observing the landscape and settlements, alongside the creative engagement, informed mapping and making visible the area’s cultural and environmental assets, and identified opportunities for arts and cultural interventions that may highlight, enhance or make use of them for the benefit of local communities.
The creative engagement process was more inclusive than more formal consultation events, and proved to be a great way to learn from the local children and young people, who had imaginative ideas for the future of their community’s outdoor spaces.
A multi-layered and long-term masterplan to utilise forgotten and redundant spaces to create a patchwork of community orchards, community growing spaces and places for imaginative play and adventure was the key outcome of this phase of work, which informed a second phase of work in the community - Gather.
The key themes identified are:
Community growing spaces/community orchards
Imaginative play and adventure
Connecting with nature
Social connection and wellbeing
Undercurrents – On Our Doorstep was a partnership project between Undercurrents – Arts in the Aber Valley community group, Caerphilly County Borough Council and Addo. The project was funded by an Arts Council of Wales Connect & Flourish grant, with additional funding and in-kind support from Caerphilly County Borough Council, the Integrated Wellbeing Network Gwent and Aber Valley Community Council.
This project was undertaken as ALT-Architecture.
