A Powys arts centre has secured £10,000 funding to support an artist residency in 2025.
A Powys centre has secured £10,000 funding to support an artist residency in 2025.
The announcement of the money builds on other recent funding success and improvement works at the Bleddfa Centre in Bleddfa near Knighton
The Ashley Family Foundation has awarded the funds which will be used to create a new nine-month Artist Residency opportunity.
The residency is part of re-invigorating Bleddfa as a hub for creativity and will include opportunities for increased community use and involvement.
Through the grant a Mid-Wales-based artist with an interest in community building and participatory practice will receive a bursary, studio space and the support of the Sidney Nolan Trust to develop their work and enable more activities in the Centre spaces.
Director of the Sidney Nolan Trust Sophie Heath said: “Over the last three years, The Ashley Family Foundation has supported our creative learning work with young people, enabling us to establish the popular MAKE and Cultivate programmes.
“We are hugely grateful to the Foundation for this new phase of support which enables creativity and opportunities in the heart of the community at the Bleddfa Centre.”
The opportunity will be advertised through an open call early in the new year in anticipation of the residency commencing in March and running through to December 2025.
The Bleddfa Centre was founded in 1974 by James Roose-Evans, theatre director, writer and priest, working closely with the local community to establish a centre for the arts, ideas and social connection.
It became a vibrant hub with arts programmes, café, talks and retreats but Covid presented a major challenge to the Centre’s sustainability.
In 2023 the Bleddfa Trust merged with the Sidney Nolan Trust as a local charity also dedicated to enabling creativity and the arts in the rural setting of the Wales Herefordshire borders.
Sidney Nolan Trust has been working with the local community and stakeholders to understand the priorities for community use and arts spaces and restart activities and programmes at the Bleddfa Centre.
