It was an exciting opportunity to be invited to help young learners from Ysgol Talyllychau to respond creatively to the Tayllychau tithe map recently deposited at Carmarthenshire Archives. I wanted the project to consider aspects of sustainability,
to explore mapping and reflect the children’s own experiences of Tallyllychau
now as well as connecting them to their local history.
We began at the school with a getting to know you drawing
day. We made phsycho-geographical maps of our individual journeys to the school,
labelling them with personal landmarks, and made studies of the landscape from the
school grounds and details from the natural word on the school site. We also made some sustainable artists tools from native and
locally available materials and made paintings inspired by our observational
drawings.
Our visit to the archive was a revelation of the vast collections of historical documents, stored with such care. We enjoyed the special experience
of going behind the scenes and seeing the map in real life. Back at school they
learnt how to turn elements of their drawings form the first week into motifs
that could be made into print blocks. Then they learnt to print them on the
printing press to make a series of postcards or snapshots of Talley,
referencing the map symbols we’d studied the week before.
It was really special to be able invite an artist to
collaborate with on this. I wanted to work with Hedi Plant who is a painter
and mural artists, as she has a very vibrant and fun style which I thought
would be perfect for our contemporary map of Tallyllychau. She took them through a colour mixing workshop and they
prepared a selection of colourful papers, painting their bespoke colours onto old OS maps donated by the archives. We then cut these up into shapes to make a collage of
Talyllychau based on their preparatory drawings from week one. They naturally began to share their memories of different
places, the lakes, the abbey and their local stomping grounds as they cut and
stuck to create their collective piece.
They were really proud of their work, and its really
important that the work was framed and unveiled. The celebration day was a very
special moment for the young artists who were very proud of their work and able
to remember and proudly tell others which part was theirs and what it meant to
them. I feel they’ve made a meaningful discovery of and connection to the
archive collection and the search rooms by being involved in a long project ( 5
sessions) which enabled us to explore the tithe map in various creative ways. I
am very grateful to have been involved in this lovely project and to see the
map restored and treasured too.
