Hour Eyes has been a year long community arts project led by acclaimed international artist Tracey Moberly and the Community of Fochriw in the south of Wales.
Over the course of 2018 this community, perched at the top of a hill, spent a year photographing their lives, their stories and their passions. Collectively, over 2000 photographs were submitted to the projects email and twitter accounts capturing everything from the ancient drystone walls of the mountain, the bubbling streams running all the way to Cardiff, school life, shopping trips and treasured memories.
Others joined the people of Fochriw on this journey. The kick *plate* project brought and shared analogue photography workshops where the children of the village helped to develop the photographs they took and presented them as a community exhibition.
The Wales International Documentary Festival worked with the local school to bring Idris Davies’ Poem Gwallia Deserta part XXVI to life. The short film ‘Fochriw’ was premiered at the 2018 Wales International Documentary Festival.
All this creative output, the film, exhibition and these photographs, shared at this exhibition present an intimate insight into the life of this vibrant community. Artist Tracey Moberly, lead creative on the project, said ‘it is a privilege to have worked with the amazing community on this project to share their stories and to challenge some of the perceptions that our communities often suffer. It has been so inspiring for me to share and witness just some of the talent that can be found inside each of us’.
The project has been funded through the Cwm a Mynydd Rural Development Programme for Caerphilly and Blaenau Gwent through the Welsh Governments Rural Communities: Rural Development Programme 2014-2020.
Project lead Kevin Eadon-Davies said ‘the Cwm a Mynydd Rural Development Programme has been designed to support projects, ideas and initiatives from across rural Caerphilly and Blaenau Gwent and we have been so impressed with the skill, passion and enthusiasm of the community of Fochriw as they have learned, shared and explored what village life is like in a modern upland community and to share this with others through a series of online activities and exhibitions. The talent and skill of our rural communities can really take flight when given the opportunity and space to do so’.
You can find these images and more on the projects on instagram and watch the short film on Vimeo.
The exhibition can be viewed in Ty Penallta, Tredomen Park until Friday 19th July 2019