As the nights are drawing in we wanted to take a minute to look back at this year together. Whilst it was supposed to be a ‘fallow’ non-festival year we have been busily gathering across the Wye Valley where we can. So here we are, 2025—
WYE VALLEY RIVER FESTIVAL’S YEAR IN PICTURES
We kicked off 2025 with our Spring R&D sessions to dream up ideas for the 2026 festival with local artists, environmentalists, farmers and thinkers.
Held at The Wilderness Centre (Forest of Dean), Ragman’s Farm (Lydbrook) and Regen Ben’s Farm (Ross-on-Wye) we dreamed and ate around Nichola Goff’s Earthen Tablecloth, Fabric, that was made at the 2024 festival.
This led to the cooking up of lots of incredible ideas which the core WVRF team have been beavering away on funding applications for since!
Then we well and truly welcomed Spring with March Flare in Llandogo.
Starting with a gentle sound bath event, Still Point, in the church on Friday and going into a more raucous fire procession on Saturday with singing and our Festival Ensemble band to wake up Spring across the village. We then feasted at the Village Hall, had performances, music, cake contests, singing and flower crown making workshops!
In May we partnered with Bridges for Communities to host 110 Asylum seeker and refugee families in Tintern for the day – we visited the Abbey, walked and ate together.
One lady who’d said she was hesitant to come because of her mental health said that she spent the whole time outside and enjoyed the peace and calm.
Through our Queering the Wye project, we’ve nurtured queer joy, expanded rural LGBTQIA+ visibility, and built spaces where nature and creativity meet. We’ve done a Queer Nature Cabaret, had a wonderful Monmouth Pride and continued our work with Forest of Dean Youth Groups, fitting a Pine Martin den box and monitoring in a local woodland!
Other Highlights:
-We held Queer Crafts in the Forest at The Wilderness Centre with queer facilitators leading workshops in foraging, lino cutting and embroidery, celebrating identity, ecology, and resilience.
-We used analogue equipment in our Borderlands Project, using typewriters and reel-to-reel tape decks to ask questions about borders, belonging, and change. This ongoing project is about celebrating diversity in a place that is liminal and on the edges, once England now Cymru. It is a celebration of difference.
In October, LandSong, welcomed people to tune in, celebrate the landscape and changing season in a trio of drop in Walk and Sing sessions.
Ran by choir leaders Holly Jacks and Jenn Singleton some sessions explored the landscape of Redbrook and others were held at Noxton Farm, Lydney.
The groups slowed down to soak up their surroundings: learning river songs to sing to the river, playing with breathwork and vocal improvisation, crafting with found materials of the woodland and gathering round a fire in their final session to offer out hope for the coming days.
This project was in partnership with Wye Valley National Landscape and National Landscapes Association as part of the Nature Calling project.
AND THAT’S A WRAP!
Thank you to everyone who made our year so full and inspiring! We can’t wait to see what 2026 brings and what form the festival takes. Fingers crossed for all our funding applications.
Warmth to you and the turning of your year!
Wye Valley River Festival X
Photographs by Emma Drabble & Fawn Fae Photography
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