Author name: Samara Van Rijswijk

Unfurl: Writing in the Fungal Realms This winter, SPAN Arts invites you to Unfurl — a free 2.5-hour creative writing workshop that slips beneath the soil and into the quiet brilliance of fungi, queer ecology, and the lived experiences of BPOC trans femmes. Guided by the queer forces of nature that are fungi and BPOC trans femme writers, the workshop offers a soft, grounded space to explore identity, transformation, and the stories waiting beneath your surface. A Season Made for Slow Magic Winter is a time of retreat, introspection, and the gentle kind of creativity that emerges when the world slows down. Underground, networks of mycelium weave and expand in the dark — adaptive, resilient, and endlessly interconnected. Unfurl draws inspiration from this hidden world. Through fungi, we explore how identities shift, how ideas take root, and how we grow through the unseen work happening beneath it all. Led by cee-cee manrique Your guide for this journey is cee-cee manrique (@ceecee_manrique), a trans femme mushroom farmer (@hyphaemushrooms) and emerging writer whose practice lives at the intersection of ecology, tenderness, and queer creativity. These sessions are intentionally gentle. There’s no obligation to share your writing aloud, but a warm, supportive environment […]

SPAN Arts: 2025 End-of-Year Highlights As we reach the end of another vibrant year at SPAN Arts, we’re taking a moment to reflect on everything that has unfolded across our creative spaces. It has been a year defined by imagination, collaboration, and the incredible spirit of the Pembrokeshire community. We couldn’t be more grateful for the people who have walked through our doors, joined our projects, and brought their energy, curiosity, and talent to everything we do. A Year of Creative Growth From workshops and exhibitions to performances and community gatherings, 2025 has seen SPAN deliver one of its most diverse and ambitious programmes yet. Together, we have explored new ideas, nurtured emerging voices, and opened our doors to artists and audiences of all ages. Our Welcome Wednesday and Creative Connections sessions have become weekly touchstones, places where creativity and wellbeing meet, offering gentle learning, shared moments, and meaningful connection. Whether sewing seaweed, painting, playing ukulele, or meeting artists, participants have brought enthusiasm that continually fuels our work. Special projects also flourished, from community-led theatre development and Exhibitions like Trysor y Môr, with our Love Stories to Nature Commission, an immersive seaweed-based installation, highlighted the power of local stories told

Celebrate midwinter with a full day of festive making and creativity at SPAN Studio. This special Christmas Workshop Day is designed for adults and our wonderful volunteers, offering hands-on sessions in wreath making and card creation. Whether you join for one session or stay all day, you’ll enjoy a heartwarming blend of creativity, connection, and community spirit. Morning: Christmas Wreath Making 10:30am – 1:00pm Led by Hannah Darby Returning by popular demand, this workshop guides you in creating your own unique Christmas wreath using fresh winter foliage and flowers. With full instructions and all materials provided, it’s perfect for beginners and experienced makers alike. Adults (16+): Pay What You Can – £7 / £10 / £15 / £20 Afternoon: Photo Christmas Card Making with Belinda Bean 2:00pm – 4:30pm Led by Belinda Bean Join artist Belinda Bean for a creative afternoon blending photography and craft. Learn how to capture festive images of winter greenery and decorations, then print and design your own personal Christmas cards. This relaxed, hands-on session is ideal for anyone wanting to combine creativity with the joy of making something meaningful for loved ones. Adults (16+): Pay What You Can – £3 / £5 / £7 /

Join us on 7 January for a relaxed and welcoming evening at SPAN Arts, as we gather local artists, creatives, and freelancers for a chance to connect, share ideas, and spark future collaborations. Whether you’re a maker, performer, designer, writer, or simply someone passionate about the creative arts, this is your opportunity to find out what’s happening behind the scenes at SPAN – and how you can be part of it. Date: 7 January 2026 Time: 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM Location: SPAN Arts, Narberth Expect drinks, snacks, and good company as we ease into the new season together. You’ll also get a sneak peek at some of SPAN’s upcoming projects and find out how to get involved in shaping the creative year ahead. Whether you’re looking to grow your network, start something new, or just fancy an inspiring evening with likeminded folks – we’d love to see you there.

SPAN Arts and Menter Iaith Sir Benfro are proud to present the much-loved Advent Concert, returning for 2025 with an evening of festive music, Welsh culture, and community celebration. This year’s concert will feature the internationally acclaimed tenor Trystan Llŷr Griffiths, performing once again in his home county of Pembrokeshire. Originally from Clunderwen, Llŷr Griffiths is a Welsh-speaking artist who studied Theatre, Music and Media at University of Wales Trinity Saint David before training at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff. Celebrated for his role with the Welsh National Opera in Il trittico, Griffiths’ remarkable voice has earned him widespread recognition as one of Wales’ most exciting talents. Accompanist: Meinir Jones Parry. Also joining the line-up is the award-winning Côr Llanddarog, a choir of over fifty members established in 2002 by Meinir Richards. Over the past two decades, they have performed across Wales, taken part in national television broadcasts, and sung alongside household names such as Michael Ball on Whitesands Beach. Renowned for their success at the National Eisteddfod, Côr Llanddarog has won the mixed choir category five times, securing top placements consistently, including third place in 2024 and second in 2025. Conductor: Meinir Richards Accompanist:

SPAN is excited to introduce The Green Room Sessions – a new programme of free professional development support for creatives living and working in West Wales. Led by Bethan Morgan, an experienced performer, writer, theatre-maker, director, and producer, these sessions offer invaluable insights into the behind-the-scenes essentials of making work in the arts. With over 30 years of experience, Bethan will guide participants through practical topics such as contracting artists, event planning, and writing risk assessments. Bethan brings a wealth of expertise from her career across Wales, most recently as Sherman 5 Manager at Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre. She is passionate about breaking down barriers that prevent communities from engaging with the arts, making these sessions accessible, supportive, and rooted in lived experience. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to strengthen your practice, The Green Room Sessions are a chance to learn, ask questions, and gain confidence in the practical skills that underpin creative projects.

SPAN’s First Queer Film Screening: Amplifying Queer Voices in Rural Wales This October, SPAN is proud to present its first Queer Film Screening event, a celebration of local creativity, storytelling, and community. Film is a powerful medium for visibility, and for many queer people living in rural Wales, visibility is not always easy to come by. This event is about creating a space where queer voices are not only heard, but centred, celebrated, and amplified. In Pembrokeshire and across West Wales, LGBTQ+ lives often exist quietly, outside of the cultural spotlight. Without the gathering points of larger urban centres, queer communities in rural areas can feel scattered or unseen. Yet their stories are no less rich, complex, or vital. Through film, these narratives find new ways to reach audiences, fostering connection. By sharing queer perspectives on screen, we also create opportunities for dialogue, between queer communities themselves and with the broader community around them. Sunday 12th October 2025 will be a day to highlight these stories and the people behind them. Afternoon Workshop TROVE, 36 West Street, Fishguard 2:30pm – 5:30pm The day begins with a hands-on workshop led by filmmaker Ashley Morgan, exploring how to create films using nothing

Love Stories to Nature: Deryn May’s Journey with the Sea The Love Stories environmental commission is about nurturing conversations with our environment, conversations that are rooted in creativity, care, and community. Through artist-led projects, Love Stories amplifies diverse voices across rural Wales, bringing people together to reflect on climate change and our relationship with the natural world. From films and circus shows to photography, textiles, choral performance and natural paint making, the commission has encouraged artists to respond to the brief of “the Environment” in unexpected and deeply personal ways. For Pembrokeshire-born artist Deryn, the story begins with the sea. Growing up surrounded by the dramatic coastline and open landscapes of West Wales, she has always felt a strong bond with nature, especially the ocean. That love has shaped her creative practice, which centres on exploring our connection to place through playful engagement with found and organic materials. Her work celebrates impermanence, creating objects that exist beautifully for a moment before returning gently to the earth without harm. In September last year, during a group residency on Bardsey Island, Deryn’s practice took a new turn. Each day, she walked the shoreline, gathering small “treasures”: stones, driftwood, shells, rusty metal fragments,

This September in Nevern, we invite you to join us for Cynhaeaf Cwiar, a weekend of creativity, ritual, and community to mark the turning of the year. Together we will honour the harvest, the changing seasons, and the many ways we embody becoming and belonging. On Saturday 20th September, we begin with our Mask Making Workshop. This is a space for becoming, where mask-making becomes a tool to explore identity, expression, and the different selves we hold within us. Queer identity is fluid, layered, and expansive; through this creative process we will craft masks that bring form to aspects of the self – the bold, the hidden, the playful, and the sacred. You might choose to create a mask for your inner protector, a past or future self, or for a version of you that the world has yet to see. While we will touch on myth and folklore, the focus is personal and present, using the mask as mirror, threshold, and vessel for transformation. The morning offers a full mask-making session from 10am to 1pm (limited to 12 participants, ages 12+) and an easy drop-in mask-making option from 11am to 1pm, open to all without limits. In the afternoon,

“Working with fungi has changed my life… they have taught me how beautiful it can be to change and to transform.” – Cee-Cee Manrique For anyone new to creative writing workshops, you might wonder what to expect. Cee-Cee Manrique creates a gentle and relaxed environment where there’s no pressure to share your writing, though encouragement is offered if you wish. Each session follows a loose structure with plenty of space for reflection, discussion, and sharing. Cee-Cee begins by introducing a theme—sometimes something from the natural world, like mycelium—and reads work from artists who have engaged with it. Participants then have quiet time to write, using prompts designed to spark their own exploration. These cycles of reading and writing happen three or four times per session, followed by optional sharing. You can read your writing aloud, discuss your thoughts and feelings, ask questions, or simply listen. Cee-Cee emphasizes creating a safe, open, and enjoyable space for everyone. When asked about their journey as both a mushroom farmer and writer, Cee-Cee reflects on how the two are surprisingly similar. Both practices have taught them to slow down, observe closely, and pay attention to what lies just beneath the surface. Writing came first,

SPAN Arts is proud to present Writing in the Fungal Queendom, a unique and immersive creative writing workshop that invites participants to explore identity, transformation, and interconnectedness through the intertwined lenses of queer ecology and the lived experiences of BPOC (Black and People of Colour) trans femmes. These free 2.5-hour workshops are designed for adults of all backgrounds, whether seasoned writers or complete beginners, and will take place in two accessible locations in Pembrokeshire this September. Led by cee-cee manrique, a trans femme mushroom farmer and emerging writer, the sessions draw inspiration from fungi—those hidden, resilient, and transformative forces in nature, as a metaphor and guide for personal and collective change. Fungi, like gender and identity, are fluid, adaptive, and often unseen. This workshop explores what we can learn from their quiet strength and interconnected networks, offering a fresh and poetic way to think about ourselves and the transitions we navigate in life. Alongside reflections on the natural world, participants will also engage with powerful texts from BPOC trans femmes voices too often overlooked but rich with insight, creativity, and resistance. These short readings will act as a springboard for a series of gentle writing prompts, encouraging participants to delve

Friday 5th September 2025 | 7:30pm – 9:30pm | The Scout Hut, NarberthTickets: £10 / £8.50 concession | Age Recommendation: 12+ SPAN Arts is proud to present Blues Echoes — a powerful, soul-stirring evening of story, song, and spirit from the acclaimed duo, The Barnone Brothers: Bill Taylor-Beales and Phil Okwedy. This one-night-only performance invites audiences on a journey through time, weaving together myth, legend, social history, and personal narrative, all underscored by the raw, resonant power of the Blues. With storytelling and song at its heart, Blues Echoes explores the human condition through tales of resistance, struggle, and transformation—from the era of slavery and industrialisation to today’s digital age. Bill and Phil’s collaboration delves deep into the roots of the Blues, a genre born of hardship but carried forward in resilience, resistance, and hope. Drawing from the voices of enslaved peoples, working-class communities, and those too often left out of the historical narrative, this performance is both a tribute and a call to listen deeply.

Saturday 23rd August 20252:00PM – 4:00PM | The Scout Hut, Narberth | £10 / £8 concessionRecommended age: 8+ | Capacity: 25 participants What happens when the slow grace of butoh dance meets the delicate motion of a paintbrush? When creativity slows to the pace of breath, and the swirl of a body in motion becomes the subject of an afternoon’s artistic meditation? SPAN Arts’ Scout Hut Sessions invite you to experience this unique intersection of disciplines with Painting Movement — an immersive cross-artform workshop led by artist-facilitators Billy Maxwell-Taylor and Phoebe Lester. It’s an invitation to pause, observe, and respond — not with words, but with lines, colour, and intuition. Set against a backdrop of ambient music in a softly lit, welcoming space, participants are encouraged to sketch, paint, or draw what they feel as much as what they see. The live movement, a flowing fusion of spiralling acrobatics and the meditative slowness of butoh—a Japanese form of dance theatre—will unfold before you like a dream in motion. You’ll be guided gently through the process, with the chance to use provided materials or bring your own (yes, even the long-forgotten art supplies gathering dust at home). Whether you’re an experienced

This August, the town of Narberth invites families and creatives alike to step into a day filled with the wonder of Welsh myth, tradition, and summer folklore, as SPAN Arts presents Dydd Gŵyl yr Haf, a vibrant bilingual festival held across the Scout Hut and SPAN Arts buildings. Taking place on Saturday 30th August, Dydd Gŵyl yr Haf offers an enchanting mix of storytelling, hands-on workshops, and cultural celebration, all inspired by the traditions of the Tylwyth Teg, the Welsh fairy folk – and the wisdom of summer herbs and legends passed down through generations. At the Scout Hut, from 2pm to 5pm, families will be welcomed into a joyful, relaxed space brimming with imaginative activities. From craft-making inspired by local folklore to captivating storytelling and a playful treasure hunt, the afternoon is designed to delight children and adults alike. The emphasis is on connection, to each other, to nature, and to the stories that shape our sense of place. This event is open to all ages, with entry available on a Pay What You Can basis starting at just £3 per person. Meanwhile, just a short walk away at the SPAN Arts building, artist Ffion Taverner will be leading

SPAN Arts is a Proud Ally! https://span-arts.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/SPAN-In-Review-Queer-programmingis-a-proud-ally.mp4 As a Queer led organisation with LGBTQ+ staff and trustees, we are proud to work with Queer Artists, Volunteers and Audiences in our community.  Last year we held Queer Culture Jam with Damian Kerlin, a full day long celebration of LGBTQ+ voices. With joyful, creative workshops on queerness and identity, powerful panel discussion – Queer Talk: How identity can influence our practice, and an electric dance party 8 LGBTQ+ creatives shared workshops, discussions and experiences with us and celebrated this event with 74 members of our local community!  In Emily Laurens’s Love Stories to Nature commission “Date Nature”, we explored how Eco sexuality and Queer ecology can inspire lasting, protective relationships with nature. The film she created reimagined dating apps to match humans with trees, beaches and mountains and worked with 3 community members to celebrate how queer ecology can generate meaningful relationships between humans and other beings in our natural world.  The projects accompanying “Queer Date with Nature” event looked at different ideas of Queer Ecology. Through 4 queer led workshops with 38 participants that celebrated an inclusive love and caring for nature.  We ensure that every voice will be heard within

Calling all LGBTQIA+ filmmakers in West Wales! We’re looking for short films (up to 15 minutes) for our upcoming Queer Film Night this October. Open to filmmakers at any stage Must be LGBTQIA+ and over 18 Living in Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion, or Carmarthenshire Films in Welsh, English, or bilingual welcome (please provide a translation if using other languages) You keep full ownership of your work – we just need permission to screen it for one night. Selected films will be chosen by a panel of Queer artists and filmmakers. Deadline: 28th July 2025Submit your film via FilmFreeway or email info@span-arts.org.uk for more information. Please share with anyone who might be interested!

Writing Out: A Scratch Night of Queer Writing in West Wales This Year’s Theme: Coming Out in the Country We’re looking for work that captures the joys, challenges, and vibrant experiences of queer life in rural Wales. Whether tender or triumphant, poetic or playful – we want to hear your stories. What We’re Looking For We’re accepting submissions across a range of art forms: Short Plays (up to 3 characters) Spoken Word & Poetry Monologues Short Stories Music (up to 3 songs per submission) Pieces should be no more than 10 minutes in length. Key Info Event Date: Saturday 27th September 2025 Location: Narberth Submission Deadline: Sunday 14th July 2025 Submit To: info@span-arts.org.uk Successful applicants will receive mentoring and professional feedback ahead of the sharing. On the day, pieces will be rehearsed and performed in front of a supportive live audience – with optional feedback to help shape the next stage of your creative journey. FAQs What is a scratch night? A scratch night is a platform for new, in-progress work to be performed for the first time. Writers see their words come alive, gather feedback, and build confidence – all in a welcoming, creative atmosphere. Do I need to

How do we truly experience a culture? https://span-arts.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/lv_0_20250716114746.mp4 At the heart of Persian Tour sits collaboration and cultural exchange. The project features the work of five contemporary Iranian poets and artists, alongside performances by two dancers and contributions from three artistic mentors. A multilingual catalogue with Persian poetry translated into Welsh and English will accompany the exhibition, bridging cultures and languages. Saki’s work is rooted in reimagining spaces: creating environments where art transforms the familiar into something new, where audiences are transported elsewhere, and where different cultures can meet and connect. Her past projects, including Persian Murals (2021) and Off the Wall (2022), have captivated audiences with their innovative approach to Persian heritage and contemporary art. #PersianTour builds on this foundation, offering Welsh audiences a deeper, more immersive encounter with Iranian culture. In the words of Persian poet Hafez: “در ازل پرتو حسنت ز تجلی دم زد / عشق پیدا شد و آتش به همه عالم زد” “At the dawn of creation, the radiance of Your beauty shone; Love was born, and it set the whole universe aflame.” Through #PersianTour, Saki invites audiences to step into this radiance – to experience, feel, and connect with Persian culture in a way