News items - ffoton

Y CAE / THE FIELD is an ongoing series of exhibitions curated by Valley Ffocws art collective in collaboration with the Ynysybwl Regeneration Partnership (YRP) on the subject of the former Lady Windsor Colliery site, a few miles north of Pontypridd. Each exhibitor will take over the six presentation boards located along the the Windsor Trail for two months, host a shared community event and create a publication available from the YRP office.

The common focus is the site of the Lady Windsor Colliery and its future. Each contributor brings their own expertise, including photography, industrial archaeology, social history, illustration & storytelling, fine art, ecology and surveying. The aim is to both inform and stimulate given the backdrop of the site’s industrial life between 1886 and 1988 and provoke fresh ideas in the context of today’s challenges; in particular, climate emergency.

Dr Steven Murray has been recording the Lady Windsor Colliery site for 14 years and finds a mosaic of biodiversity, an accidental haven for wildlife at a small scale. His macro photographic landscapes across this tapestry of habitats are displayed much enlarged, but the originals can still be spotted by the naked eye. Steven works as a Science Teacher in Beddau.

Listen to Steven discussing his work and images for this project below…

“Valley Ffocws is a multi-disciplined, inclusive creative collective making innovative work in and on the Valleys. Outcomes can take any number of forms, but activism and change lie at the heart of its endeavour. This shifting collective invites creativity beyond the traditional arts” — Julie Cook, Valley Ffocws founder

You can follow the Valley Ffocws collective and their progress on Twitter @valleyffocws2
Or contact Julie Cook at: juliecook1@icloud.com

Original Valley Ffocws piece shared here in Ffoton News on 12 March 2021

The Valley Ffocws Collective have a new project seeking photographers interested in contributing creative work

Click the image to download 2-page brief as PDF file

Ynysybwl is in many ways a typical valleys village with the Former Lady Windsor Colliery (closed 1988) at its core. The historical names of the fields also tell us that this site was also once a calf field and in the surrounding area there were apple fields, pasture, woods, a cottage garden and croft. However it is the recent past that dominates the heart of the community as its reason to be: people living, working and dying for the coal industry. Today there is little evidence of this history and the colliery site lies eerily vacant, whist finding a new use as a community facility; a site for leisure activities. It has also matured into a diverse landscape and a haven for wildlife. We support the notion that it could be ‘saved as nothing’; hence, biodiversity might flourish beyond human intervention.

The site is currently threatened by development by Persimmon Homes and proposals have been moving forward with very little consultation with the community.

THE PROJECT

To bring together photographers/artists/writers to make work on and around the former colliery site to include issues around history, geology, nature and community. The outcome could take a number of forms with activism and institutional change at its heart.

Julie Cook is leading the project and anyone interested can contact her via details provided in the document opposite.

@valleyffocws on Twitter

Facebook Group