Watershed will showcase the experiences and work of the fourteen artists who have taken part in a residency and fellowship programme in Elan Valley, bringing together the local community, resident artists and a wider artistic community, to explore the importance of arts in a rural setting, particularly that of the Elan Valley.
In the daytime, three artists -Gareth Bonello, Isa Suarez and R.M. Sánchez-Camus- will share their experiences and work developed in their time in Elan through presentations and in situ performances in locations throughout the Elan Valley Estate. In the afternoon they will be joined by Ffion Rhys, visual arts manager and curator at Aberystwyth Arts Centre and Professor Heike Roms from Exeter University for a panel discussion on arts in a rural context.
This is the first time that all the artists from the scheme will come together to share their impressions of Elan with each other and the local and wider community. In the evening the audience will move on to CARAD’s theatre space in Rhayader, where resident artists will be sharing work developed throughout their residencies and beyond in a group exhibition, with performances and speeches. Audiences will have the opportunity to experience A Forest, a virtual reality installation, created by artists Anna Trapenciere-Schokker and Adri Schokker, who have used 3d scanning techniques in Elan’s woods todevelop a virtual archive.
Both events are fully catered and free to attend. People can book through Eventbrite - www.eventbrite.ie/e/695843004157
The Elan Links residency programme is a unique residency scheme, which offers socially  engaged artists the opportunity to stay in the Elan Valley for between one and six months. Beyond the expectation of engaging with the local community, there are no fixed outputs for the residency scheme, which affords artists the opportunity for ‘deep thinking’ which can yield profound and unexpected results.
Past resident artists include R.M. Sánchez-Camus, Zillah Bowes, Anna Trapenciere- Schokker and Adri Schokker, Daniel Crawshaw, Meltem Arikan, Antony Lyons, Kate Green, Alis Oldfield, Isa Suarez, Alice Briggs, Gareth Bonello, Rowena Harris and Gweni Llwyd.
Artist Zillah Bowes was resident artist in 2018 and spent a month in Elan making work inspired by darkness, originally via the mediums of photography and poetry. Zillah went on todevelop a series of portraits and landscapes in moonlight Green Dark with Ffoto Gallery at 2 Arts Council of Wales, which won the National Museum Wales Purchase Prize and The British Journal of Photography Award for a Single Image. Zillah also filmed her first fiction film Staying / Aros Mae after her residency, working closely with the communities in Elan to develop this film. Staying / Aros Mae screened on the BBC earlier this year, and is available
to watch on IPlayer.
Past resident artist Meltem Arikan was awarded the Creative Wales fellowship in 2020 and spent six months in Elan. Meltem is a Turkish-Welsh feminist playwright and novelist who fled Turkey after her play Mi Minör was accused of rehearsing the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul and beyond. Her residency in Elan Valley helped her to come to terms with her personal and political trauma, and she has since moved to mid Wales where she continues to develop her creative and therapeutic approaches.
Esther Wakeling, Scheme Manager of Elan Links said “Watershed is the first time that we will bring our resident artists together to share their experiences and work with one another and with our local community. This is a unique residency which offers artists the opportunity to contemplate and explore without a defined end goal. The risk which comes with this open- ended opportunity is far outweighed by the wide-ranging benefits it produces.”