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The Rural Art Hub “Creative Discussion” workshops that took place in March 2024 at Babbinswood Farm, Ellesmere Yard, Soulton Hall and Berllan Deg Farm were an extremely valuable experience for reflecting on the future direction of the hub, in particular, in the context of the cost of living and climate crisis. In many ways they fulfilled the intended aims - to arrive at both an imaginative and practical way forward for us in terms of space and people. At each of the workshops there were between 8 and 12 people of all ages including children as young as 2. They were playful spaces for all, where making and chatting enabled both practical and imaginative reflection on what might be needed from creative spaces, the challenges of setting this up and sustaining it and what was missing from the current provision in the area.

One of the major outcomes of the workshops was to be able to confirm our future use of a space at Babbinswood Farm. At the end of June/beginning of July we will be launching our CREATIVE PAVILLION at the farm. This will inhabit a large covered barn - the Roadside Shed - at the front of the farm and this space will allow for some of the same outcomes as our old Mother Shippon studio that we had to leave in November last year. We envisage activities centring around the creation of temporary and evolving creative, play sculptural structures made with adults and children with an emphasis on found, natural and reused materials. We will be developing this as a project that will also link up with pOSsibility Machines and the other Rural Art Hub projects. Another major outcome to emerge from the workshops has been the development of an idea for the pOSsibility Machines project. These will be quirky, versatile creative trolleys touring inside and outside locations at different times of day and evening around Oswestry town providing free “pop-up” participatory creative activities for all ages, including children under 5, that bring together climate action, play, walking, science, story/heritage and place regeneration.

We have also, over the last couple of months, followed up the workshops with a number of visits to community organisations to tell them about what the hub is doing in the area and form longer term relationships and collaborations for the planned projects. We went to visit Oswestry Men in Sheds, Oswestry Climate Action Hub, North Shropshire College Creative Media department, Wem Youth Club, Ti a Fi (a Welsh Language play group in Oswestry), Designs in Mind and The Memorial Hall as well as continuing our presence at the Oswestry Community Consortium/Connections meetings and Community Connector meetings organised by the North Shropshire Social Prescribing team. We also ran another “Creative Discussion” at Marches School Art department and visited the department in the school that works with children at risk of exclusion. We have also made a CPD visit to The Land in Plas Madoc to research running a space that can allow for more adventurous outcomes for children.

Lastly, over the next four months we will also be attending the Material Matters Shared Learning Journey in Birmingham to learn about natural material building techniques and material justice in order to bring this back to the various Rural Art Hub projects. We will also be co-ordinating the Village Project, an exciting 8-month project seeing 5 artists develop creative community projects with 5 villages surrounding Oswestry.

I would love to find out if and how you would like to be involved in our community of practitioners, volunteers and participants.

Would you be interested in volunteering to gain experience of participatory arts?

Would you be interested in running another regular or one-off activity at the Creative Pavillion space over the summer?

I very much look forward to hearing your responses. I would also love it if you shared any other ideas or thoughts with me that came out of the discussion workshops.

The Creative Discussion workshops were funded by the UK Government through the Vibrant Shropshire: a Cultural Compact Grant Scheme as part of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund

The UK Shared Prosperity Fund provides £2.6 billion of funding for local investment by March 2025. The Fund aims to improve pride in place and increase life chances across the UK investing in communities and place, supporting local business, and people and skills. For more information, visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-shared-prosperity-fund-prospectus