Y Ceidwaid (The Custodians)

In November last year, Jacqui Symons was awarded a commission to consider land use change in Wales; selected as the Welsh artist in the LUNZ Hub Creative Collaborative Placement programme. The brief given for Wales was ‘Patchwork: connecting the smaller scale to the bigger national ambition’ and Jacqui set out to work, in connection with the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, liaising with Alan Radbourne.

In this blog, Jacqui talks about her research process and the work she created.

Jacqui with her work at the LUNZ Hub’s event in Newtown, Wales in June.

“One of the challenges in Wales seems to be how to replicate or scale up changes that are beneficial to biodiversity, soil function and carbon sequestration. It was my belief that the use of different language, (not Cymraeg and English but terminology, vocabulary and the words used) was playing a part in this; affecting engagement and emotion around new ideas, policies and schemes. I felt this was consequently leading to disconnect, tension and mistrust between the policymakers and scientists and the farmers and land managers. I wanted to create a piece of work that considered how this language differed and how information could be re-interpreted or redefined to be engaging, interesting and relevant to all those stakeholders involved in land use change.

… at the start of the project it remained an undefined and vague concept rather than an exact and planned outcome. This is not as common as it should be for creative projects …

As a visual artist, my work was always going to be something to look at and see rather than something to listen to or watch but at the start of the project it remained an undefined and vague concept rather than an exact and planned outcome. This is not as common as it should be for creative projects and commissions, so it was a real treat to let the discovery and research happen before defining exactly what I was going to ‘do’ – so thank you for the opportunity to work in this way!

My first visit for the Wales CCP commission was to UKCEH (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) in Bangor, North Wales. It’s an interesting yet daunting place for an artist not used to working in an office environment. Signing in, name badges, receptionists and security just to get in the door, followed by stairs up to a very quiet and subdued large open plan office where people are sitting in two rows facing computers and studiously working and with very little talking. I felt like I had to whisper…

And then – the people I met were open, interested, deeply involved and invested in caring for the environment and were generous with their time and thoughts as I asked (possibly ‘stupid’, sorry Alan) questions and carried out interviews over the course of two visits. I learnt so much and hugely enjoyed talking to people about their viewpoints and opinions. Listening back to the recorded interviews, I can hear the passion and the emotion in everyone’s words when talking about nature, the environment and the importance of land use change. I also met with someone involved in policy who was profoundly committed to caring for nature and land use change.

Listening back to the recorded interviews, I can hear the passion and the emotion in everyone’s words when talking about nature, the environment and the importance of land use change.

In the Spring and as the days got slightly warmer, I carried out my interviews with farmers. It was a joy to be out on the land and interviewing people who love being out on the land. Tours of farms, sitting in kitchens and visiting the livestock were part of my visits – everyone was so welcoming and willing to discuss often very personal sentiments and thoughts. The questions I asked didn’t just delve into farmers’ jobs, I was delving into their family history, their opinions about money and their lifestyle (or ffordd o fyw, literally ‘way of life’ in Welsh).

… the more I listened … the more I realised …

Having completed the interview stage of my project, I set about transcribing the interviews. The more I listened and the more I grew familiar with the words, the more I realised my original theory had been wrong. I discovered that everyone I interviewed was actually using similar words and vocabulary. In fact, people were all talking the same language and using almost all the same words. My completed artwork attempts to show this commonality of language and shared vocabulary. Is one of the problems that perhaps people are just not saying these words to each other? Is communication happening but not conversations? And when I say this, I don’t mean via email or on a screen or in a letter, I mean face to face, in-person, sitting down over a cup of tea or leaning on a gate looking at the view. A hugely expensive process and undertaking (going to talk to 25,000 people is a big job!) but you can’t beat the value of a conversation with someone on the land where they live and work. My interviews showed this – these face-to-face conversations were not only beneficial for my commission, but the farmers also found them ‘cathartic’ and ‘therapeutic’.

I started by separating the interviews into two groups: those that work directly on the land and those that don’t (and I should stress that I realise I shouldn’t be putting people into ‘groups’ because everyone is an individual with different beliefs, interests, opinions and thoughts, but the alternative was to produce a separate hand-screenprinted set of posters for each interview – a less powerful message and beyond the scope of this commission).

I then transcribed the interviews and ran a word frequency analysis on each group to see how many times words were said in response to the same questions. The top five words in each group were exactly the same – after all the natural yeahs and ums, the most common words were ‘farming’ and ‘farmers’ (unsurprisingly) and then, in both groups, ‘talking‘, ‘people’ and ‘land’.

I transcribed the interviews and ran a word frequency analysis on each group to see how many times words were said in response to the same questions. The top five words in each group were exactly the same.

The words that differed the most in frequency were ‘fences’ and ‘hedges’ which were said the most by farmers and hardly mentioned by scientists, and ‘advisors’ and ‘evidence’ which were said the most by scientists and said just once in the farmers’ interviews.

‘y ceidwaid’ One of the screenprints installed at the LUNZ Hub ‘Unlocking Finance for Farm and Landscape Recovery in Wales’ event in Newtown, Wales, June 2026

‘y ceidwaid’ detail

Of course, it’s very easy for me to say ‘all you need to do is to talk to each other’. I’m not attempting to come up with a solution for the brief I was given – if anyone is wondering whether I discovered an answer, let alone the perfect answer, let me assure you (and sorry LUNZ Hub), I didn’t. This is a very complex and challenging issue laden with historic problems, deep-rooted culture, inherited processes and generational methods, financial constraints, time, labour and a hundred other factors. Perhaps a possible start point is to look at where conversations aren’t happening and how they could begin?

The hand-pulled screenprints I created include one hundred individual words but repeated the exact number of times they were said by each group. However, each set of words has been printed as a separate artwork, which makes for disparate and disjointed images. It is only when these words are brought together that they create a complete picture.

The pieces were screenprinted using natural colour created from oak galls and then for the black, an oak gall and iron solution. I collected the oak galls from my home fields and hedges and made them into a dye solution before thickening the liquid and using it to print the final pieces in my studio. There are both Welsh and English versions though, as I am learning Welsh, I had some support and help to check the translations.

Oak gall ink making in progress

And now I bring you back to a sentence written in my application – how can I, as an artist, present the languages that people might require and need to achieve a goal of deeper collaborations and connections and conversations? I hope I’ve achieved even a little of that.

I would like to finish by quoting Carwyn Graves (author of ‘Tir, The Story of the Welsh Landscape’), who said “rather than slinging mud, there is an awful lot to be gained from talking to each other”.

Diolch yn fawr iawn am ddarllen.

(Thank you very much for reading)”

Jacqui was invited to display her work at the  Lunz Hub’s ‘Unlocking Finance for Farm and Landscape Recovery in Wales’ event in Newtown in June. She also spoke about her work on the main stage to the 100-strong audience. Several delegates remarked that it was the most powerful talk given during the day.

You can find out more about Jacqui and the Creative Collaborative Placement brief here.