Atgofion o’r Golchdy our new community project begins in a week and today there are last minute emails flying and boxes of art materials being prepared. The project will be  Participants will create beautiful works of art which will be exhibited in shops along King Street in Carmarthen’s cultural quarter.

The project runs alongside our exhibition of David Jones’ work – Angels on Washing Lines, in the gallery 18^th of March – 13^th May. David Jones is a dynamic older artist producing new and exciting visual art pieces, he produces a wide variety of work and is greatly influenced by outsider art and folk art, so it seems a very fitting inspiration for a community art project.

Pembrokeshire artist penny d jones will carry out the workshops with residents at extra care scheme Cartref Cynnes. Penny will encourage participants to reminisce around the subject of laundry, and in a follow up workshop participants will create works of art – paintings on wooden shapes – representing their stories and memories. The painted wooden works of art will be displayed strung on washing lines in shop windows.

Exploring memories helps minimise the negative impact of conditions such as dementia, this is known as nostalgia therapy and is a growing field of study. As a recent guardian article cites “nostalgia is shown to be both a driver of empathy and social connectedness, and a potent internal antidote for loneliness and alienation.”

The project aims to provide an opportunity to challenge negative or stereotypical images of older people within the community by giving them a platform on which to display their art work. Our hope is that participants will deepen existing relationships and make new ones and that the wider community will also see that ordinary people can engage fully in art activities helping to break down the feeling some people have that the arts are the preserve of the elite and well educated.