O Fa'ma i Fa'ma: A People's Map of Llandudno started as a month long residency in September 2017, but has evolved into an ongoing socially engaged project involving performance, events and community-wide engagement, including Hanes Llanddynes - the memorialising of 16,000 years of the women of Llandudno, and GRRRLS IN THE GAREJ.

This project has its own website: https://mapllandudno.org/

The results of this project were shown at Ty Pawb, Wrexham in October 2018.

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Background

Between mid-September and mid-October 2017, as artist in residence at Culture Action Llandudno (CALL), I walked and met with others “from here to here”,  looking for the layered symbolism, stories and opportunities, that draw together the past, present and future of the town. I was interested in drawing out some of the hidden forces, assumptions and processes that are shaping our town and hopes to create some kind of interactive people’s map of Llandudno based on experiences of the town, everyday routes, marking and re-naming along the way. I hoped that by paying attention to embodied ways of knowing and being in a place, something would emerge... and that this would feed into CALL's Shape My Town initiative.

I realised on the very first day, that there wasn't going to be - there couldn't be - just be one map, but many (see the first blog). And that in fact there could be infinite numbers of maps. As Katherine Harmon says: 

“The most important thing a map shows, if we pause to look at it long enough, if we travel widely enough, if we think about it hard enough, is all the things we still don’t know”

Walks

During the month I travelled on pre-arranged journeys with: Trine Moore, Lisa Hudson, Sabine Cockrill, Jane Matthews, Wanda Zyborska, David Owen, Clive Wolfendale, Christopher Perkins and Francesca Collusi.  During those journeys and on other wanderings, I bumped into, walked (for a short time with) and had indepth discussions with approximately 40 residents, visitors and homeless people in Llandudno.

Finding the Centre

At the Dod o Hyd y Canol: Finding the Centre event we got almost 30 nominations for the centre of Llandudno (now more than 60 nominations - see the Centres map).

Psychological maps

We ran a workshop on 'personal maps of Llandudno' with 28 Coleg Llandrillo students.

Monuments and Memorials

Wanda Zyborska and I ran a salon-style discussion on monuments and memorials (see the Memorials map). And I have now published Hanes Llanddynes, the story of Llandudno from 16,000 years ago to present, told through the stories of women. We turned this into GRRRLS in the Garej in September 2018. You can see a record of the explorations and event here a video here

Maps

Here are the maps I've made online: You can use the mobile version on your phone if you want to follow the routes/find the sites...

Monuments and Memorials with Wanda Zyborska

The Centre of Llandudno: People's nominations

Phil Smith's Misguided Wander in Llandudno

Clive Wolfendale and the Real Llandudno

Culture, Action, Llandudno with Sabine Cockrill

Pondering on the Pier and Prom with Jane Matthews

Trine's guide to Llandudno (taking in a graveyard)

Follow up

Because I met so many interesting people (Llandudno is just SO friendly!) and found out so much,  my residency continued for a year, including running an Open Space event and GRRRLS in the Garej.

Of course, mapping will never be 'done', and it will - and can only be - a subjective view. I have tried to use people's own words and images wherever possible, to illustrate just how personal our maps are. Rebecca Solnit says " Every place is if not infinite then practically inexhaustible, and no quantity of maps will allow the distance to be completely traversed. Any single map can only depict only an arbitary selection of the facts on its two-dimensional surface." 

The printable maps I hope to make, together with exploratory text and images would be:

1.     Calon Llandudno’s Heart - waymarked by people’s personal centres. Featuring how different people relate to the town today, and how this reflects the origins of the town and its development.

2.    Cofebau & Henebion – past, present and future monuments & memorials. Featuring what these say about the town, the power of naming and memorialising, and the processes of decision-making.

3.     Venice of the North – past, present and future waters. Featuring springs, tides, sea level rise, stoney shores and watery basements, storms, drainage, baptism and St Tudno.

4.     Home Truths – some stories in and out of the bricks and mortar. Featuring personal experiences of home and homelessness in Llandudno.

5.     Active Citizens - a week in the life of the town (yn ôl facebook). Featuring stories from "You Know if You are From Llandudno If..." and other Llandudno Facebook sites.

6.    Cerdded Atgofion - walks with memories. Featuring routes and memories of people I've walked with.

7.     Edrych Ymlaen - some possible futures for the town. Featuring suggestions and ideas of those I've spoken to.

There is a separate website for this project: See www.mapllandundo.org

A work in progress

I have always been a collector of things, especially old, discarded things. When I was about ten, my parents dug six foot drainage trenches, and I spent days down the holes, collecting the pottery and clay pipes and old bits and pieces. I loved the connection to the past, to others who had lived in the house, to 'the fragmentation and dismemberment that are the natural destiny of all things' (as Jaris-Karl Huysman says).

But these things, and the process of hunting for them, is not just about the past. Will Viney (see https://narratingwaste.wordpress.com/)  writes about them having a lure that hints of a possible experience of being, one of connectedness, where time is more circular, where it is possible to sense the universe of matter swirling in and through us. It puts us in our place in the world, and connects us to others past, present, future. As Will says, "The magic, telling and evidential status of waste is … because it has entered a peculiar form of time, one that emerges out of its status as a 'had-been', a remainder or trace of action whose relation to the past is suspended in its presence, making its presence, its actual being or 'reality' shot through with an absence that animates it as a thing that has come to be by having been".

Our garden here, steep as it is, is a cascade of bits of pottery and glass and metal. While rebuilding the terraces this year, we buried down into three middens, unburying enormous numbers of fragments of plates, knives, forks, pots, pans, shoes, guns, children's toys, fire grates, bottles, jam and marmalade jars and tea pots. I have collected all that we uncovered (more remain), and thanks to some neighbours, have been given the use of a barn up the road to lay them out and work on them.

One of the remarkable things about this line of inquiry has been how many people have started bringing me objects that they have found. Since pre-historic times, people have exchanged fragments, often fragments standing for the complete object, to 're-presence' people and places related to the objects' origins in other places. The archaeologists have called this 'enchainment'.

I was lucky enough to receive R&D support from National Theatre Wales' Waleslab to develop my work with the 'trysor' in April 2015, and it has since then evolved into a major line of inquiry. See more about the project on the 'Digging Down' page.

Symffoni Bethesda: Offering (Afon Ogwen Remix)

For an installation/performance at the River Ogwen Festival, I'm experimenting with hanging discarded and lost objects found in the river next to the sculpture park site. Conducted as an archaeological dig, I'm recording the process of collecting, sorting/cleaning/categorising and displaying the objects. On the day of the festival (5th October 2014), people were invited to take any objects that appealed to them. On the day, more than 40 objects were removed. The dispersed collection is recorded with details of each of the 200 objects collected, together with a note of their fate (taken, washed away, left, thrown back in the river). Everyone who took an object gave their name and had a photo taken of their hands with their object.  The objects, used, discarded and now wanted again, went onto the next phase in their lives: a little pottery ear was to become a necklace, bricks with holes in them to become gate weights, a broken plate to be used to feed the chickens, a shard of pottery to become the basis for a children's story, and some of the old twisted chicken wire was to become the manes of an enactment of the Trevi Fountain horses.

Next step is to write up the project, to decide what to do with the remaining objects, and perhaps to follow up the new lives of the taken objects in some way, as a dispersed collection, perhaps?

While on a residency in Cornwall, I found traces of artists previously in residence, as well as older traces in the old midden behind the house, and created a few quick pieces of work...

Jajajajaja (recreation): A re-enactment in Welsh yeses and nos of Joseph Beuys' performance jajajajajaj. For New Welsh Art - to celebrate 100 years of Joseph Beuys, the most famous German dead Fluxus artist. With Rhys Trimble. January 2021

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Ffocws cyfres Y Wyddor yw sut mae iaith, diwylliant a’r tir yn rhyngweithio â’i gilydd.  Mae’r gyfres yn edrych ar iaith a diwylliant yng nghyd-destun byrhoedledd, newid ac adnewyddiad. Drwy’r gwaith rwy’n archwilio fy lle fy hun yn y stori, yn cynnwys fy ymlyniad at wrthrychau ac at iaith. Cafodd y gwaith ei ysbrydoli gan y poster a grëwyd tua 1900 gan TC Evans (Cadrawd) o Langynwyd.

The synergy of language, culture and land is the focus of Y Wyddor series. The series looks at language and culture in the context of transience, change and renewal, and in particular, de-colonising of humans and non-humans through multi-lingualism. Through it, I explore my own place in the story, including my attachment to objects and language. The works are inspired by the poster created c1900 by TC Evans (Cadrawd) of Llangynwyd.

 See Y Wyddor film here

 “One lesson is everything, including mountains that are for many integral to concepts of ‘Wales’ is transitory, passing over greater or shorter periods of time into oblivion”. John Barnie*

I continued my exploration of language during my residency at Brisons Veor, Cape Cornwall in November 2015. This included 'Mangling a Brief History (According to Three Alphabets) a sound piece of Welsh, English and Cornish alphabets in which my English tongue struggles with the Brythonic sounds (listen here), and working with stories from the Mabinogi, including the epic chase of the Twch Trwyth from South Wales to the end of Cornwall.

For Merched Chwarel, I used Y Wyddor to explore and structure aspects of our contemporary and historical relationship to quarries, in particular an alphabetical list of all 5,200 quarries and mines of north wales (performed by Rhys Trimble), and alphabets of all the women’s first names in Nantperis. Discovering stories of E (Elin, Eleanor, Ellen) and M (Marged, Margaret) from original sources - census, newspapers etc - to counter the almost total lack of stories of quarry women (cf quarry men).

Bwystori and Crone Cast further explore our relationship with the non-human world through language and listing: collective performance incorporating impressions of shifts in language and consciousness fostered to address the perilous state of today. I am now working on the idea, building on the results of Sgwrs Dyffryn Peris, of holding conversations around the creation of new words, multi-lingually, that describe our current predicament, linked to place.

As Linda Hogan says in ‘Creations’, there is a need for

“new terms and conditions that are relevant to the love of the land, a new narrative that would imagine another way”.

An example might be “Simne Sion”, the phenomenon here in Nant Peris of waterfalls flowing upwards, as an act of resistance.

* From Iwan Bala’s book ‘Certain Welsh Artists’, 1999

Y Gog Cuckoo series started in May 2013, following a close encounter with two cuckoos on the lower slopes of Y Garn behind my house and studio. Was this ‘cwcw ecstatic’ my 'bright field' moment? I since have become borderline obsessive about the cuckoo, worried about their survival, sponsoring the BTO cuckoo tracking project, researching their food and habitat and following the cuckoos to france on their migration.

"I have seen the sun break through
 to illuminate a small field
 for a while, and gone my way
 and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
 of great price, the one field that had
 treasure in it. I realise now
 that I must give all that I have
 to possess it…"

RS Thomas

Since my cwcw ecstatic moment, my obsession with cuckoos has turned into one with birds in general. A remembering of the hours I spent as a child, watching birds from a den in the garden, encouraged by my great grand mother, who gave me the huge and wonderful 'Birds of the World' book.

In October 2014, I made some work for the For the Birds show led by international artist, Jony Easterby (currently touring to New Zealand). I've added a few pictures of the window etchings i've been doing for the show.

I've also become a BTO Breeding Bird surveyor for the Llanberis Pass, and took part in the first UK House Martin survey (2015), doing a km square in Llanberis. There's just something about birds: their relationship with the place is so intimate (and for many, so international), so seasonal, and so noticeable - we see (and hear) so much more of them than any other wild creatures. Read more here

I notice birds everywhere now, even in London there are wrens singing away amongst the goldfinches and blackbirds. On my residency at Brisons Veor, Cape Cornwall (November 2015), my most constant companion was a group of 16+ Chough. They are incredibly playful, inquisitive and sociable. And, I found out on my last day, they are the symbol of the spirit of Cornwall (and King Arthur is rumoured to have turned into one). Nice choice.

Winter 2019/20 as baseline (earlier in other years added)

Record of the first time I hear birds starting to sing in Dyffryn Peris (in addition to those that seem to sing/call all year, robins, house sparrows, jays, buzzards, ravens, carrion crows)

• Mistle Thrush - mid December

• Great Tit - late December

• Woodpecker - late December

• Tawny owl - late December

• Blackbird - 5 January

• Woodpigeon - 8 January

• Dunnock - 8 January (31 December 2022)

• Goldfinch - 29 January

• Coal tit - 10 February

• Chaffinch - 11 February

• Song thrush - 13 February

• Wren - 21 February

• Nuthatch - 23 February

• Blue tit - 10 March

• Goldcrest - 14 March

• Meadow pipit - 14 March

• Greeen woodpecker - 16 March

• Wheatear - 16 March

• Chiff chaff - 17 March

• Herring gull - 18 March

• Bullfinch - 19 March

• Siskin - 19 March (22 Feb 2022)

• Redpoll - 19 March

• Chough - 19 March

• Stonechat - 21 March

• Swallow - 2 April

• Ring Ouzel - 8 April (not singing but want to record first seeing them - (21 March 2022))… singing 12 April

• Willow Warbler - 11 April

• Pied flycatcher - 19 April

• Redstart - 20 April

• Grasshopper warbler - 27 April (26 April 2022)

• Garden warbler - 2 May (25 april 2022)

• Common Sandpiper - 6 May

• Woodwarbler - 8 May

Other birds that seen this year (but not singing) Redwing, Fieldfare, Goosander, Longtailed tit, Woodcock, Snipe, Kestrel, Herring Gull, Raven, Common Crow, Buzzard…