About the project

Heb Ffiniau is a research and development project that explores the connection between Language, Identity and Landscape, and how they shape our sense of belonging.

Bringing together professional artists and performers, and individuals who have a long-standing interest and experience in movement work, performance and the arts, this is a means to unlock a creative dialogue, and provide a creative online space to share and explore ideas. This will be a personal journey for each individual involved culminating in a collective response to the themes.

The project is led and coordinated by movement and physical theatre artist Sarah Mumford, born and brought up in North Wales Sarah has worked across Wales and beyond for over 20 years, in community, education and professional dance and theatre.

‘The inspiration for this project stems initially from looking at written Hebrew, and finding the shapes and patterns fascinating and full of movement, this ignited a spark, and the need to keep exploring. I discovered the poem ‘Pine’ by Leah Goldberg which really resonated with me. This led to further research and stumbling upon this article  'Teaching in Translation: These Pines' written by Adriana X. Jacobs Associate Professor of Hebrew literature at Oxford. This article is so inspiring and is particularly fascinating to me as it repeatedly refers to movement in relation to language, and also landscape. I could see so many similarities in these ideas in relation to my own experiences growing up and living in North Wales, the landscape, language, and how everything is transient, constantly shifting and moving. I began to question what it is that shapes us, what connects us to a place, and what does ‘to belong’ truly mean, which led to the idea for this project.’

            Sarah Mumford

A creative record of the research and development process will be shared publicly to conclude this exploration, with the hope of being able to develop the ideas further in the future, watch this space! You can also follow us on Instagram, and get a sneak peak of the process as we go.