Celebrating rural communities in a post-COVID UK
Like many arts organisations, Forest of Dean-based community arts charity Wyldwood Arts has gradually been reintroducing face-to-face provision this year. In this blog post we hear from Associate Producer Liz Bell about the experience of delivering a community banner-making project in a post-pandemic rural environment.
Liz Bell is a freelance writer and creative producer based in the Forest of Dean. She joined Wyldwood Arts earlier this year as an Associate Producer to provide support with the production and delivery of two community engagement projects. She has a background in third sector communications and specialist experience working with older people, particularly those living with dementia and their carers.
Why banners?
Banner-making has rich heritage in the Forest of Dean, with workers’ unions playing an important role in the history of the area’s mining and forestry industries. The associations that parade and protest banners tend to conjure up – of independence, resistance, speaking truth to power – are all things to which Foresters of every generation can relate.
Photo: Forest of Dean District National Union of Miners banner © Tolpuddle Martyrs
We wanted to preserve and celebrate this tradition by bringing it to groups who might not otherwise engage with banner-making, while also giving it a modern twist by encouraging the use of contemporary designs, materials and techniques.
By supporting each community group to create a banner representing the people, places and ideas that are most important to them, we are also helping them to preserve and celebrate their own heritage with a tangible legacy that can be used again and again.
How did it all begin?
This project started its life as part of the ‘Community Celebration’ strand of the National Lottery Heritage Fund Foresters’ Forest programme, for which Wyldwood Arts has been a delivery partner since 2018.
The aim of the project, as it has been for all the Foresters’ Forest projects that Wyldwood Arts has delivered, was to preserve and celebrate local knowledge and history by encouraging people to connect creatively with their wider community.
As one of the many projects that was about to begin when COVID-19 hit in early 2020, it had been in development for a long time – several of the people involved at the beginning had left Wyldwood by the time it finally went into production earlier this year. At that point, it was picked up by Wyldwood’s new Communities Manager, Sally Jenkinson.
As a passionate grassroots activist and union advocate, Sally was fascinated by the Forest’s long heritage of protest and community solidarity – including its tradition of banner-making. Under her leadership, the project began to take shape.
How did we do it?
We collaborated with Artspace Cinderford to run half-day workshops supported by two professional textiles artists, Lizzie Godden and Annie Tyhurst, who helped each community group to make their own fabric banner.
With textiles and needlework not always being seen as very accessible compared to other artforms, we also ran informal design and ideas sessions with each group to facilitate participation and build confidence ahead of the artist-led workshops.
We started off working with just a handful of local groups – all of whom were part of the Foresters’ Forest programme – but it soon became clear that this project had the potential to reach many other communities and to become much bigger than we had originally planned!
We did a call-out for local community groups, clubs and associations who were interested in making a banner, providing those who responded with support and materials and/or a micro-grant to cover their costs.
We also hosted a series of community ‘Making Days’ in venues throughout the Forest over the summer, to give individuals and families a chance to participate. Rather than attempting to create stand-alone banners at each of these events, we encouraged people to design and decorate smaller squares of fabric, which we could sew together later.
Where are we now?
At the time of writing, we are busy finishing off and collating all the beautiful banners that have been created over the last few months.
We will be displaying them all at a series of public events being held throughout the Forest of Dean over the coming weeks, including at the Canopy Arts Creative Showcase Festival at the West Dean Centre in Bream on 2 October and at the Forest Showcase Food Festival at The Speech House near Coleford on 3 October.
Our flagship event will be a special community celebration event in Cinderford Town Centre on Saturday 25th September. Accompanied by a local brass band, we will walk together with all our project participants and supporters through the streets of Cinderford, carrying all the banners made as part of this incredible project.
What have we learned?
As this was one of the first face-to-face projects we had delivered post-COVID, we were excited to find out how people would respond. While people were understandably cautious at first, they generally welcomed the opportunity to participate in an activity that represented a return to some kind of normality.
As ever, we saw that community arts is about process before product. The experience of coming together to design and create a meaningful symbol of their community seemed to be just as significant to those who took part – if not more so – than the final result.
We also saw the benefit of intergenerational participation in creative activities – something that we are passionate about at Wyldwood Arts. At our community Making Days, we saw whole families working alongside each other, parents co-creating with, rather than simply assisting, their children. Many parents commented on how nice it was to be able to join in for once, rather than just watch!
But aside from the usual (albeit useful) lessons about community arts practice, we also learned a lot about the effect of COVID-19 on rural communities. With existing inequality thrown into sharp relief over the past 18 months, it would perhaps be unsurprising if the cumulative economic effects of the pandemic had been the final nail in the coffin for many.
Instead, we saw communities from across the Forest emerging from the ashes of the pandemic with greater resilience, improved skills and better networks. Perhaps the many generations of hardship that they, like those in many other rural communities across the UK, have faced, has given them the ability to weather a global pandemic more effectively than their urban counterparts. While national leaders scramble to instil an appreciation for the value of ‘community’ – of pulling together; stepping up; mucking in – here, they are a step ahead, living as they do in a place that has long held a reputation for looking after its own.
This is not to say that communities here in the Forest have not been affected by the pandemic – far from it. But resilience does not mean invulnerability. Just as bravery does not equal fearlessness (as I often tell my children, bravery is being scared but doing it anyway), resilience requires us to both experience suffering, and to acknowledge it with compassion.
The communities with whom we have engaged throughout the course of this project have shown not blind stoicism or stubborn pride in the face of the pandemic; but hope, determination and gratitude. For many in the UK, it has taken a national crisis to discover that it is their neighbours, rather than their government, who will be there for them when they need it most. But as this project has clearly demonstrated, here in the quiet heart of the Forest, the importance of being part of a local community is something they already knew.
Our Community Celebration event is taking place in Cinderford on Saturday 25 September. This event is open to all, so if you would like to see the banners for yourself, do come along! Find all the information on the Opportunities page or click on the image below.
