Cae Gwyllt
2020
Cae Gwyllt, meaning wild field, is a project in collaboration with a Welsh medium primary school to develop a curriculum-led approach to land management.
The project, led by Owen with Creative Producer Rhian Jones, explores ideas of deep time, ceidwadaeth y tir (stewardship of the land), and an ecological embodiment of the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, assigning each class an oak tree to care for. What if each oak tree held the knowledge of a curriculum? The students considered ways of observing, managing and learning from the land. Cae Gwyllt offered an opportunity to explore land use, pedagogy, art, wellbeing and iaith (language), whilst developing a proposal connecting the life of the school and the journey of each pupil to the growth of a forest.
“We treat the future like a distant colonial outpost devoid of people, where we can freely dump ecological degradation, technological risk, nuclear waste and public debt.”
Workshops and staff training sessions were held, and online resources for lockdown classes were created and shared, in order to create a project which can affect long term change. While this was taking place, the school secured a long term lease for the land, protecting it as a resource for generations to come. Cae Gwyllt activities included working with poet Mererid Hopwood, natural dye workshops with artist Cat Lewis, textiles projects with Iâr Studio, charcoal making, meetings with Penpont estate, biodiversity assessments and species counts.
A poem written by Mererid Hopwood as part of Cae Gwyllt for the students and community of the school. Mererid is Professor of Welsh and Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth University, and in 2001 was the first woman to win the bardic chair at the National Eisteddfod of Wales.