Nature and Us: a powerful film about creativity and the environment

On Earth Day 2024, we’d like to take the opportunity to share Nature and Us; a powerful film featuring poems and interviews about creativity and the environment. 

The film is the product of two projects led by Literature Wales and Natural Resources Wales throughout 2022. 

For Nature and Us, the two organisations appointed two Poets in Residence – Durre Shahwar and Elan Grug Muse – to creatively respond to a national conversation about the future of Wales’ natural environment. 

In the film, Durre and Elan recite a poem they’d each written in response to their workshops and conversations with the people of Wales. 

It also features interviews with writers from Literature Wales’ Writer Commissions. This scheme, with funding from Natural Resources Wales, gave writers and creative facilitators an opportunity to devise and deliver a creative writing project exploring the connection between literature, well-being and the natural environment.   

The four projects commissioned were: 

• Write Back/Grym Geiriau, led by Bethany Handley and Megan Hunter, offering a two-day, trilingual (Welsh, English and BSL) retreat at Tŷ Newydd in which young Disabled, Deaf and/or chronically ill people came together to explore their experiences and relationships with nature; 
• Writing Tree, led by Gwyn Ruddell Lewis and Sarah Douglass, working with new parents to improve their well-being and develop a closer connection with nature;  
• The Long View, led by Taylor Edmonds and Nasia Sawar, and which engaged women of colour and combined physically visiting nature spaces in Cardiff with creative writing workshop activities to create a sense of belonging; and  
• Our Hidden Garden, led by Natasha Borton and Anastacia Ackers, which delivered a series of intergenerational creative writing and spoken word performance sessions about the variety and diversity of green spaces across Wrexham County Borough.   

In the film, these artists share their observations and their passion for these most emotive subjects.
To find out more, head over to the Nature and Us website.