Since 2014 we have worked with over 6,000 young people in schools to create extraordinary nature-inspired pieces that have featured in the festivals. 

The workshop strand is delivered in partnership with Priormade, a design and fabrication company led by Beck Prior who creates ambitious, imaginative and sustainable work.

WVRF2024 Schools Project

We are delighted to partner with Think Creatively for our 2024 schools outreach work. This year they have been visiting schools to explore the local landscape and ideas of mycelial networks and funghi, as well as repurposing our lovely wooden trees from our 2018 festival to create a new forest for 2024. They have been asking the questions:

  • What are our rights, responsibilities and relationship to the land (local)?
  • What more can we do? 
  • What impact does Funghi have on the world?
  • What are our messages to the world, and what would funghi say if it could talk to us?

They have worked with over 500 children up and down the Wye Valley, in both English and Welsh, writing poems, listening to the sounds of mushrooms, writing their messages to the world and crafting decorations for the trees. See our trees being delivered below, and some of the work that they have been creating.

WVRF 2022 Schools Project 

This year the team worked with four schools in the Wye Valley: Kymin View, Llandogo, Redbrook and Weston-under-Penyard.

The workshops explored the festival theme of Human: Nature. They encouraged the pupils to think about how what we do affects the environment, as well as learning fun facts about ourselves. Did you know, for example, that the length of our face is equal to length of our hand, that our eyes are separated by one eye’s width and that your total height is equivalent to seven heads??

Inspired by work using sustainable bamboo by our partner Imagineer, pupils used plasticine and other materials to practice sculpting skills, and then used UK-grown bamboo to explore shape, form and sustainability. Each group made some individual faces and small-scale bamboo sculptures, as well as painting larger pieces of bamboo which contributed to a large scale piece that was displayed at the Bridges Centre in Monmouth throughout the 2022 Festival. The workshops finished by the groups doing a Human: Nature quiz, and agreeing environmental pledges for the year ahead.

[The workshop was] “extremely fun and engaging. The children smiled and were engaged throughout the whole session; learning and wanting to do more.”

Finished Bamboo Sculpture

At the Bridges Community Centre we created and installed a 2m tall face using the same process as the young people tested; instead of bamboo skewers we used 3m bamboo sticks, a total of 750 sticks from all of the school workshops. The base was cut from sustainable 18mm birch plywood. The sculpture was designed to form a face only at certain angles and have an explosion of colour out the back that could be interpreted as referencing imagination and energy.

Wye Valley River Festival will be working with Priormade and Imagineer on more projects using bamboo… watch this space!