We joined the team at Babylon Migrants Project to lead a participatory visual arts workshop exploring how we experience, move through and connect with nature and the landscapes around us.

Babylon Migrants Project is a grassroots arts organisation led by and for young people from refugee, asylum-seeking and migrant backgrounds. We took a walk around Dolgoch Falls in Wales, stopping along the route at five locations to pause, notice and create embossed metal pieces, each recording a different aspect of our journey.

Through our creative prompts, we traced the flow of the river, noticed the edges and borders where things meet, collected textures from the natural environment and mapped our movement through the landscape. The final prompt asked us to reflect on our journey; either the walk, to Wales, or to the UK. The activities encouraged us to slow our walking, notice details we might miss and consider how we experience the same place in different ways.

We brought our individual squares together to create a collaborative map of the journey and the water that flows through it. In the end, our map-archive artwork showed an alternative way of recording a place: through touch, movement, observation and by making marks.

The collective artwork is hung at Braich Goch Inn, a sanctuary, community and education space in Wales.