On Saturday 16 August, the Longtown and District Show brought together farming, rural traditions and community life. With the Black Mountains as a backdrop, visitors enjoyed an afternoon of games, sports, competitions, displays and even a stunt horse performance.

As part of Our Place Golden Valley, artists Chris Poolman and Grace Emily Manning shared work from the Golden Valley Sun Dial Project. Chris invited people to build cob faces inspired by the expressive corbels (stone carvings) of Kilpeck Church, one of Herefordshire’s most distinctive medieval landmarks. Grace, who had grown the woad herself, demonstrated the process of turning its leaves into a strong blue dye. Visitors were also able to weave with raw, unwashed wool, its natural lanolin still on the fibres. This gave people the chance to connect with a material that is very much part of the local landscape.

Chris and Grace are working with community groups across the Golden Valley to co-produce the final artwork, combining local input with references to ancient monuments and rural traditions. Using Herefordshire-sourced materials such as wool, cob and plant pigments, their modular artwork will develop and tour to different venues in the area, continuing Meadow Arts’ approach of bringing contemporary art into unexpected places.

Also at the show, artist and poet Liv Mabey hosted a drop-in activity that invited visitors to help create a large-scale poem installation celebrating the traditions of the country fair. People responded to prompts, added new words and lines, remixed others, and experimented with wild dyes to bring colour to the work. The result was a piece shaped collectively by those who took part.

Reflecting on the day, Rose Farrington, Programme Manager for Our Place and a Longtown local, said:

It was fantastic to see so many people getting involved with the creative activities. There was real enthusiasm for trying something new, whether it was shaping cob, handling the raw wool and using it in a different way, or adding to the community poem. It showed how much appetite there is here for creativity alongside the much-loved traditions of the show.

Our Place Golden Valley is part of the Our Place Herefordshire programme funded by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, with match funding from Herefordshire Council under the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and public health funding.

Photos by Gareth Williams.