ON QUEER LAND
A movement & performance-based project supporting queer health in the Welsh borderlands
On Queer Land Dance, Presk Wood, Redbrook.
On Queer Land was a participatory project developed with and for the rural queer community living in the Welsh borderlands. The project was designed as part of my MA in Arts, Health & Wellbeing in response to a lack of safe queer spaces in the rural area. Drawing on my own lived experience, the project explored how limited LGBTQ+ visibility can affect the ability to build queer community and support health and wellbeing across rural areas. The project was in partnership with Field Notes / Nodiadau, Maes, an emerging rural collective of queer makers exploring what it means to build belonging and community through slow, land‑based practices across the Wye Valley.
Through movement, mark-making and reflection, participants were invited into gentle reconnection with themselves, their bodies, and their local landscapes. Guided by counter-storytelling (Delgado, 1989), a liberatory and community-building practice, the project made space to centre queer and rural lived experience, to build solidarity, and uplift voices that are often marginalised. Through this approach, participants explored and shared experiences of place, identity and belonging, highlighting the many ways LGBTQ+ people navigate rural spaces where queer lives are often overlooked. The project created a sense of community and safety, an opportunity to create new connections, and a space to imagine more inclusive queer and rural futures.
Read on to explore the groups reflections on belonging, solidarity, and relationships between body and landscape as they emerged throughout the workshops.
With thanks to Aimee Blease-Bourne for supporting this project, to Fawn Fae for their photographic documentation of the workshops, and to Bronwen Rashad-Wilson, Carli Ma, Caroline White, and Rachel Adams for taking part.
Symbols, Movements, Gestures
Symbols, movements and gestures emerge from marks made with charcoal, earth and tempera pigments.
St. Saviours Church, Redbrook, 2026
Choice was central to creating a safe and inclusive space that honoured the diversity of queer lived experiences. Through movement, mark-making, and sensory nature prompts, the group were invited to move fluidly between different forms of expression, participating in ways that felt most meaningful and accessible in the moment.
Reflecting & Documenting
Creative reflection was embedded throughout the project, creating space for choice, self-expression and diverse perspectives. Participants shared and responded to the landscape and each other through moving image, writing and photography throughout the in-person workshops and through the project’s online community platform.
Reflecting on workshop themes via in-person and digital reflection spaces
A Return to Self
“The mark-making was a reflection of my queer self flowing through me...like water. The movement gesture had an uncertainty to begin with, moving off center and balance...but with a constant returning to self.”
Movement Workshops
Participant reflections on the connection between landscape and queer identity through mark-making, movement & gesture.
Moving and reflecting with nature
Moving and reflecting with nature, Presk Wood, Redbrook.
Mindful, Soft, Aimee Blease-Bourne, 2026
Moss, Bark, Stone, Skin, Carli Ma, 2026
“My body did not stand apart from the landscape, it molded, sank and softened into all that was.
It was a feeling of being deeply accepted, a belonging and coming home that is always felt.”
Seeing the Unseen
Turning toward the horizon. St. Saviours Church, Redbrook.
"It was about being next to each other, all facing something together, but taking steps in really different ways. There was a chance to step back and think, 'where do I fit within this?,' rather than being carried away by the rest of society.”
Participant reflections on moving & improvising. St. Saviours Church, Redbrook.
“There's something about being able to move with presence and poise. To just be, and not do what is expected. It just helps to deconstruct things, doesn't it? in a very gentle way.”
“There’s something I enjoy about being an outsider. There's a strength in it, isn't there? ....in being able to step back and see it all. Like queerness, we can celebrate that outsiderness as well, and the perspective that brings you.”
“Bird’s Eye View” Charcoal on paper, Caroline White, 2026
Reclaiming
“What I found most powerful was the dance we created, maybe because I’ve never been a dancer, and maybe that’s why I found it so powerful. It really created a sense of community with each other and that place. I really feel like I can go back to that place, and feel at home there.”
On Queer Land Dance excerpt, Presk Wood, 2026
This video has sound
“It’s knowing that it's okay to take your space. In my queer experience, when you're walking with the land you know you belong, because nature belongs, and it’s okay for you to be here.”
Solidarity, Presk Wood, Redbrook, 2026
“As queer people, there is this narrative that is put on you that queer people leave the countryside, but that just isn’t true....So how can we take this knowledge from here and use it to create the conditions we want in the future?.”
On Queer Land, 2026
Delgado, R. (1989). Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative. Michigan Law Review, [online] 87(8), pp.2411–2441. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/1289308.