Our Place Golden Valley

Project Insights

Project Insights

Our Place Golden Valley is a 3-year project by Meadow Arts focusing on the unique geographical location of the Golden Valley in rural southwest Herefordshire. Using contemporary visual arts, we are connecting with the communities that live there, reflecting upon and responding to their relationship to where they live.

The artistic programming is collaborative, responsive to community engagement, site-specific and co-created. By connecting with the community and partners such as Kingstone GP Surgery, Healthwatch, Talk Community and local groups, we are developing programmes that are collaborative, meaningful and sustainable.

Projects across the Golden Valley include:

Cordelia Cembrowicz was commissioned in 2024 to create a new public artwork responding to the local community. During her October residency, she created a series of photographic portraits featuring local residents, staff, and volunteers from community hubs across the area to create site specific works for Kingstone, Peterchurch and Pontrilas. The final artworks will be installed in Summer 2025.

Liv Mabey is lead artist on our 2024/25 collaboration with Taurus Healthcare, and runs monthly creative wellness workshops alongside clinical programmes. The workshops are centred around freeform expression, and connection to nature through the use of organic materials.

In 2025/26, Chris Poolman and Grace Emily Manning are working with community groups across the Golden Valley to co-produce a Sun Dial inspired by the expressive corbels (stone carvings) of Kilpeck Church, one of Herefordshire’s most distinctive medieval landmarks, 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.

Our Place Golden Valley…

seeks to transform the way people connect with and benefit from cultural activity in their rural Herefordshire community.
collaborates with community partners to deliver place-based programmes of participatory creative activity.
sustainably supports communities to deeply connect with and use creativity and cultural well-being activity to positively impact lives and respond to place-based issues.
commissions contemporary visual artists and community groups to co-create public artwork.
exhibits and displays co-created artworks in the Golden Valley and with wider community partners.
programmes CPD sessions for artists and creative practitioners involved in the programme.
provides development opportunities for emerging artists through shadow artist opportunities.

Below is a selection of images from projects across the valley.

Cordelia Cembrowicz, Our Place in the Golden Valley (2024). Image courtesy of the artist. 2

Cordelia Cembrowicz, Our Place in the Golden Valley (2024). Image courtesy of the artist. 3

Cordelia Cembrowicz, Our Place in the Golden Valley (2024). Image courtesy of the artist. 4

Cordelia Cembrowicz, Our Place in the Golden Valley (2024). Image courtesy of the artist. 1

Golden Valley, Collage Workshop, Peterchurch, 2025. Images courtesy of Meadow Arts25-02-2025 at 12.54.28 2 (1)

Golden Valley, Collage Workshop, Peterchurch, 2025. Images courtesy of Meadow Arts25-02-2025 at 12.54.28 11 (1)

Golden Valley, Collage Workshop, Peterchurch, 2025. Images courtesy of Meadow Arts25-02-2025 at 12.54.28 14

Golden Valley, Collage Workshop, Peterchurch, 2025. Images courtesy of Meadow Arts25-02-2025 at 12.54.28 50

Golden Valley, Collage Workshop, Peterchurch, 2025. Images courtesy of Meadow Arts25-02-2025 at 12.54.28 53

Golden Valley, Collage Workshop, Peterchurch, 2025. Images courtesy of Meadow Arts25-02-2025 at 12.54.28 56

16 July 2025 with Liv Mabey at The Old Rectory Thruxton Photos by Suzie Jones

Cordelia Cembrowicz, ‘Kingstone’ from the Golden Valley Molecules Series, 2025, GP Surgery in Kingstone. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. Photographer, Tegen Kimbley.-2

Installation view- Cordelia Cembrowicz, ‘Pontrilas’ from the Golden Valley Molecules Series, 2025, G.V. Café & Talk Community Hub in Pontrilas. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. Photographer, Tegen Kimbley.-1

Cordelia Cembrowicz, ‘Pontrilas’ from the Golden Valley Molecules Series, 2025, G.V. Café & Talk Community Hub in Pontrilas. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. Photographer, Tegen Kimbley.-5

Cordelia Cembrowicz, ‘Peterchurch’ from the Golden Valley Molecules Series, 2025. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts.

Meadow Arts, Our Place Golden Valley, The Golden Valley Sundial by Chris Poolman & Grace Emily Manning, Hellens Manor, 2026. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. Photographer, Tegen Kimbley-6

Meadow Arts 25th Anniversary Celebration, Hay Castle, 2026. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. Photographer, Tegen Kimbley-9

Meadow Arts 25th Anniversary Celebration, Hay Castle, 2026. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. Photographer, Tegen Kimbley-1

Meadow Arts 25th Anniversary Celebration, Hay Castle, 2026. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. Photographer, Tegen Kimbley-3

Meadow Arts 25th Anniversary Celebration, Hay Castle, 2026. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. Photographer, Tegen Kimbley-5

Meadow Arts 25th Anniversary Celebration, Hay Castle, 2026. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. Photographer, Tegen Kimbley-6

Meadow Arts 25th Anniversary Celebration, Hay Castle, 2026. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. Photographer, Tegen Kimbley-7

Meadow Arts 25th Anniversary Celebration, Hay Castle, 2026. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. Photographer, Tegen Kimbley-10

Meadow Arts 25th Anniversary Celebration, Hay Castle, 2026. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. Photographer, Tegen Kimbley-11

Meadow Arts 25th Anniversary Celebration, Hay Castle, 2026. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. Photographer, Tegen Kimbley-21

Artists

Cordelia Cembrowicz Liv Mabey Grace Emily Manning & Chris Poolman

Cordelia Cembrowicz is a multidisciplinary artist based in London, exploring themes of political expression, social structures, and the complexities of human experience through sculpture, printmaking, and drawing. She graduated with an MA in Fine Art Printmaking from the Royal College of Art in 2010 and BA in Fine Art from University College Falmouth in 2006.

Her work has been featured in exhibitions such as “How to Meet” with Menna Comminetti at the Freelands Foundation (2018), the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2019) and Survivor Signs at Goldfinger Factory (2015). Cembrowicz received national press for carving miniature sculptures of toothfairies out of human teeth (2006). She has developed a growing interest in representations of community within her artwork, from actively participating in community projects, such as with the feminist protest group Climate Rush to illustrating atomic structures of hormones and creating etchings of crowds, highlighting the strength of collective human experience. A recent commission working with the local community of North Kensington titled ‘Molecule Murals’ will open at a health centre in central London in 2025.

Cordelia’s inventive approach engages with contemporary discourse, encouraging viewers to reflect on pressing societal issues.

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Based in north Herefordshire, Liv Mabey‘s creative practice explores relationships within the natural world, focusing on the interconnection between living beings, including humans, and the landscapes they inhabit, whether temporarily or more permanently.

Their work uses words to express these relationships and the experience of them, while visual elements help to root the language in a particular place and time. The practice centres on capturing moments of embodied experience and preserving memories that can be revisited, reflected upon, and learned from. It also offers a way to question personal perceptions of the world and consider how one chooses to engage with it.

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Grace Emily Manning is an artist who grew up in the suburbs of London, on the border of Kent along the Thames Estuary. She creates multimedia projects that respond directly to landscape and place, drawing inspiration from the ecology, history, folklore, and materials of each site. This site-specific practice has led her on a journey into nature-based materialism; making natural dyes, inks, pigments, and sculptures from locally sourced materials. Her work explores environmental themes and speculative sci-fi ideas for futures where humans live in true collaboration with nature.

Grace regularly works with communities to co-create large-scale public artworks across the UK, deepening her relationship with this island, its people, and its natural world.

Chris Poolman is an artist who recently returned to working as ‘himself’ when he undertook a 6-month residency at The New Art Gallery Walsall. This culminated in a commission for the Earthbound exhibition at the gallery called ‘The Sanctum of the One Eyed Toad’, a large-scale installation of cob (clay, sand, straw), other natural materials and reclaimed objects. Prior to this, he worked with Elizabeth Rowe in the collaboration General Public for over a decade. An important reference point in returning to making artwork again, were the 1970/80s adventure playground projects in Birmingham by former playworker Dave Swingle (whose archive we digitised as part of the ‘Let Us Play’ project). Their anarchic spirit and intense materiality are very much at odds with today’s managed environments and digital reliance.

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Works in this project

‘Pontrilas’ from the Golden Valley Molecules Series, 2025, Cordelia Cembrowicz

‘Kingstone’ from the Golden Valley Molecules Series, 2025, Cordelia Cembrowicz

‘Peterchurch’ from the Golden Valley Molecules Series, 2025, Cordelia Cembrowicz

The Golden Valley Sundial, Grace Emily Manning & Chris Poolman

Partners

Our Place Golden Valley is a Meadow Arts project. It 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.

Our Place will deliver transformative, place-based cultural programming that improves lives in Leominster, South Wye (Hereford), and the Golden Valley.

The programme is led by Herefordshire Cultural Partnership and delivered by three local cultural organisations – Leominster Cultural Consortium, Rural Media, and Meadow Arts who will collaborate with local communities to create and showcase live performances, digital content and visual art.

The programme will make a lasting impact on the cultural landscape of Herefordshire, enhancing health, well-being, and community spirit through the arts.

Read the full funding announcement

Our Place Golden Valley

Project Insights

Artists

Works in this project

‘Pontrilas’ from the Golden Valley Molecules Series, 2025, Cordelia Cembrowicz

‘Kingstone’ from the Golden Valley Molecules Series, 2025, Cordelia Cembrowicz

‘Peterchurch’ from the Golden Valley Molecules Series, 2025, Cordelia Cembrowicz

The Golden Valley Sundial, Grace Emily Manning & Chris Poolman

Partners

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