5.10a Moya Lloyd - Building a Creative Community at the Boundary Way Project

Action point: Right to Roam campaign www.righttoroam.org.uk

Today on the pod we have the lovely Moya Lloyd of the Boundary Project in Wolverhampton. I first heard about the Boundary Way Project and their work on Instagram during lockdown and have been inspired with their creativity and arts projects ever since. This episode is quite close to my heart due to my work with Benfield Valley Project and I came away with lots of ideas for creative initiatives we could run. It was an absolute pleasure to speak with Moya, who is a quiet powerhouse of creativity and inspiration.

Moya is visual artist with a passion for and background in community arts. She studied History of Art and Fine Art and uses these two disciplines to inform her work with Boundary Project, for which she is Project Lead. Boundary Way Project evolved through a series of arts and heritage projects inspired by people, nature and place at the Boundary Way Allotments and Community Garden, where is has been based since 2015. Through the Boundary Way Project, Moya works with a diverse and wide range of the community, organising arts events and projects such as art exhibitions, creative workshops and health and wellbeing sessions.

In this conversation we discuss:

• Moya’s work at Boundary Way Project
• Her creative background and how she came to work in community arts
• Making art accessible and moving away from elitism in the arts
• Using found materials to help reduce materials’ costs
• Connecting with her family history through her creativity
• What the Boundary Way Project is, what they do and how Moya got involved in it
• The importance of connecting people with their creativity through nature
• The Boundary Way Writer’s Group initiative
• The biggest challenges and biggest joys that Moya has encountered through BWP
• How Boundary Way Project inspires her creativity

All of Moya’s pieces that we talk about are on the episode page on the website: https://www.promptedbynature.co.uk/series-five/510-moya-lloyd-of-the-boundary-way-project-building-creative-communities. I’ve also popped a link in the notes about the research that Moya mentions in the episode that makes the link between creativity and cultivating deeper relationships with the natural world. https://www.derby.ac.uk/research/centres-groups/nature-connectedness-research-group/

You can find the Boundary Way Project on www.boundaryway.co.uk and on the social @boundarywayproject and Moya can be found on Instagram and Twitter @artsandhealth

Linked episodes:

1.2a Anna Neubert-Wood - Creating sisterhood in the Wild

1.8a Ian Solomon-Kawall aka. KMT, Biodiversity, Creativity and Safe Space in Urban Settings

1.9a Lucy Jones, Why Our Minds Need the Wild

5.5a Bella Gonshrovitz, ‘Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear’

As always, I’m at www.promptedbynature.co.uk, where you can find all episodes to the podcast, writing prompts, my own writing and a link to my newly-relaunched Substack newsletter. I’m also @prompted.by.nature on Instagram .

I hope you enjoy the conversation. Happy listening and I’ll speak to you soon!

Helen x