Flamm

A month on from Flamm Festival 2026, sharing documentation of the installation. For Spout, I made a series of sculptures — playful versions of objects and water infrastructure found in and around Bodmin — designed to hold, channel, and move water. Alongside this, I developed a new sound work built from recordings gathered during the walks, combined with sound experiments of water dripping and moving through the sculptural forms. These were used to create rhythms, beats, and melodies. The piece responds to the rhythms of the town — water moving above and below ground, and our own movement through these spaces. For the commission, I invited @naomifrears to develop a film in response to the walks, the sound work, and the sculptural process. The film was shown within the installation, using the sound piece, and draws on documentation of the early walks and subsequent material experiments. Fragments of text were also gathered from these recordings and form an additional layer within the work. Photos by @nickcooney_studiocooney @flammcornwall

In this, another special FLAMM episode of the MESKLA | Brewyon Drudh podcast, I am joined by artists and creative producers @dimofte_anca @rjonesfilms @casualmouldy @alice_mahoney @bosedaolawoye @smallactsliveart who all took part in an exchange project between @flammcornwall and @counterpointsarts Arts Climate Displacement Network over the first few months of 2026. @rakovicdijana of Counterpoints Arts also joined us to explain the back ground to the exchange which I was invited to facilitate for this year’s FLAMM festival. You can learn more about the exchange via a link in my bio, where you’ll also find a link to the podcast. I really loved hearing about everyone’s experience of the exchange and about how the conversations and relationships grew and encompassed care, embodied practice, community, responsibility, and solidarity in challenging far right discourses of division. I hope you enjoy listening. #onenhagoll #mesklabrewyondrudh

🗣️Copper has been mined here in Cornwall for centuries…but more, it is part of our land. Hear artist Sovay Berriman (@sovayberriman ) and curator Marie-Anne McQuay (@marieannemcquay ) on the EMPIRE LINES podcast, recorded live as part of the public programme for Flamm 2026, Cornwall’s contemporary art festival, in Bodmin (@flammcornwall ) in February 2026. 🔊 pod.link/1533637675/episode/MzU2MTZhYzctYjI5Ny00YTRmLTlhYjktNWI5ODY3YjdhYTQw Works from Bedrock, Liverpool Biennial 2025, curated by Marie-Anne McQuay, continue to travel through the UK. Isabel Nolan: Where you are, what we are, with others remains at Liverpool John Moores University. @liverpoolbiennial @ivy_may_lackey @nolanisabel You can also listen to Linda Lamignan and Amber Akanu on Art Against the World, the Liverpool Biennial podcast, presented by Vid Simoniti, and revisit the Biennial event in collaboration with EMPIRE LINES in September 2025. @vidsimoniti @lindalamignan @amberakaunu Hear more from Sovay Berriman, @casualmouldy , and @counterpointsarts in the live episode from @dhaqancollective ’s House of Weaving Songs at @edenprojectcornwall in 2024. For more about @bsidefestival 2024, read my article about @mohammad.barrangi : gowithyamo.com/blog/mohammad-barrangi-b-side-festival On plumbing and artistic practices, hear glass artist @christopherdayglass in the live episode from I Am a Man and a Brother (2021-Now) at @vawedgwood in Stoke-on-Trent in 2025. Hear historian @profcorinnefowler , with visual artist and researcher Ingrid Pollard, on copper and colonialism in their book, Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain (2024), recorded live as part of the public programme for Invasion Ecology (@radicalecology ). Hear artist ⁠Taloi Havini⁠, winner of @artesmundi 10, on the connections between extractive industries in the Pacific Islands and Wales, via Habitat (2017) at @mostyngallery in Llandudno. @creativekernow @smallactsliveart @ro_robertson_

*EMPIRE LINES - NEW EPISODE* In this special episode, artist Sovay Berriman (@sovayberriman ) and curator Marie-Anne McQuay (@marieannemcquay ) join EMPIRE LINES live, to unearth histories of extractivism in Cornwall and Liverpool, and the relations between colonialism, clay, copper, and tin mining, tourism, and cultural identity, through The Thing About Making Rocks (2026). listen+follow 🔊 This episode was recorded live as part of the public programme for Flamm 2026, Cornwall’s contemporary art festival, in Bodmin (@flammcornwall ) in February 2026. Find all the information online, and in the first Instagram post: instagram.com/p/DUVHQ7YjKUQ/?img_index=1 Works from Bedrock, Liverpool Biennial 2025, curated by Marie-Anne McQuay, continue to travel through the UK. Isabel Nolan: Where you are, what we are, with others remains at Liverpool John Moores University. @liverpoolbiennial @ivy_may_lackey @nolanisabel You can also listen to Linda Lamignan and Amber Akanu on Art Against the World, the Liverpool Biennial podcast, presented by Vid Simoniti, and revisit the Biennial event in collaboration with EMPIRE LINES in September 2025. @vidsimoniti @lindalamignan @amberakaunu Hear more from Sovay Berriman, @casualmouldy , and @counterpointsarts in the live episode from @dhaqancollective ’s House of Weaving Songs at @edenprojectcornwall in 2024. For more about @bsidefestival 2024, read my article about @mohammad.barrangi : gowithyamo.com/blog/mohammad-barrangi-b-side-festival On plumbing and artistic practices, hear glass artist @christopherdayglass in the live episode from I Am a Man and a Brother (2021-Now) at @vawedgwood in Stoke-on-Trent in 2025. Hear historian @profcorinnefowler , with visual artist and researcher Ingrid Pollard, on copper and colonialism in their book, Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain (2024), recorded live as part of the public programme for Invasion Ecology (@radicalecology ). Hear artist ⁠Taloi Havini⁠, winner of @artesmundi 10, on the connections between extractive industries in the Pacific Islands and Wales, via Habitat (2017) at @mostyngallery in Llandudno. @creativekernow @smallactsliveart @ro_robertson_

✨How was Flamm 2026 for You?✨ 💃 Last weekend is still fresh on our mind - what an amazing experience to have Flamm in Bodmin! ❤️ With 28 exhibitions and events across 15 venues all around Bodmin - if you were there, how was it for you? What’s your highlight? 🤗 We are welcoming feedback from visitors from near and far - tell us about your Flamm experience! 🔗 Link in our bio 📸 @nickcooney_studiocooney #flammcornwall #flamm2026 #flammbodmjn visualartcornwa

@flammcornwall was so cool!!! I'm so happy to have been able to display the Ticket Tapestry again, and to have had the chance to create some more collective artworks to go with it! It was so exciting to be part of the festival, and to create the exhibition at @bodmingeneral Station About the artwork: The Ticket Tapestry is a collective artwork with contributions from over 100 people all over Cornwall! This project began as part of my dance show --through the green and by the blue--, created with Talia Sealey. The prompt is to make a ticket for a journey you have made. Thank you so much to the festival goers who took the time to make one! Thanks to support from Flamm and funding from @feast_cornwall , I worked with residents at the Kinsman and Treningle Estate in Bodmin to add to the Ticket Tapestry, and make some more artwork together. 'Mapped' is an abstract painting. Participants drew their own map of a journey they make in Bodmin, and these sketches were enlarged and overlapped, then painted. 'Tour Bus' was created by collaging characters using different heads, torsos and legs. Who have you met on public transport? On a site visit to Bodmin General, I collected old tickets for the train. Participants used these to create mini houses. They were also used to create the 'Tickets Please' jacket! Such a great weekend! Thank you so much to all the Flamm organisers and venues for making it happen! 💗

👋 That’s it for 2026 - what a fantastic weekend we have had in Bodmin! 🙏 Thank you to everyone who attended the festival, and we hope you enjoyed what the festival and Bodmin had to offer. 🌟 It was brilliant to see the town buzzing with creative energy, visitors from near and far and passer-bys with smiles on their faces. If you were here, we would love to hear about your Flamm 2026 experience. 🔗 Share your thoughts via link in our bio! 👆 📸 @nickcooney_studiocooney #flamm2026 #flammbodmin

It's the final day of the Flamm International Arts Festival, and we’re ending it properly. This afternoon we're hosting a Community Poetry Open Space at The Reading Room from 2pm – 4pm. Think small, relaxed open mic energy. No stage nerves. No pressure. Just people sharing words. Come and Read a verse Listen to others Or just sit with a coffee and take it in. There'll also be the Poetry In Motion Community Book, where you can write your own verse and leave your words behind as part of something bigger. No poetry rules. No right way to do it. Just your words and a sense of community. If you've been thinking about coming to something all festival this is your moment. See you between 2 and 4. 👏🙌😊 #bodmin #artsfestival #flamm #spokenword #poetry

Flamm festival - Bodmin 2026 pt1. Pulling into the station at Parkway, there was a palpable sense of excitement - children pelting around, adults clustering and smile-chatting. I crossed the footbridge and could see and hear the steam locomotive - it was turning around to reconnect with a series of 1930s passenger carriages. On board, Change Here by Georgia Gendall was my first Flamm experience. A distorted Beckettian exchange over the tannoy was also helpfully transcribed in a cute wire bound pamphlet on each table. It was a fun read and the billows of stream as we passed through the numerous tunnels added to its anachronistic theatrical charm. General Station was awash with the art-curious, where the brightly-coloured masses were met by Nicola Bealing’s riotous phalanx of jellyfish-like hanging baskets, spewing paper sculptured forms, really fun and totally bonkers. I chatted briefly with Hannah Jacobs and contributed to the Ticket Tapestry - a really easy-access hands-on engaged and fun kicking-off point for all sorts of expansive conversations as well as reminisce (perfect for a train station!). In town I caught Liam Jolly’s I’m not dead film - a beautifully poetic sojourn through charity shop stock. It was poignant to sit with the narrative voice and I was unsure at times whether I was hearing the donator or the donated items, moving through hands, into new lives. St Petroc’s Church is home to SHARP’s Once We Were Held - a multi media contemplation of LGBTQ+ experience in a care context. It’s an installation that benefits quiet contemplation to find the nuances. Contested Field by Elizabeth-Jane Grose is a solid process-craft work, well sorted in the Soldier’s Chapel. I hit the Shoppery for sun-down. A great swipe across exhibitors and other local artists, filled to the brim with temptations - I resisted but am due another visit… @flammcornwall

Number 8 In this current run of small works on paper watercolour, varnish, emulsion paint, paper Approx A5 Off to Bodmin soon to see this Pop Up exhibition of 3D work and lots of other exciting art stuff happening this weekend in Bodmin ➡️ Last day! @flammcornwall @camp_membership Thanks to @discovering_42 for the space #process #exhibition #deinstall #NPAvote2026

Day 1 @flammcornwall was incredible, thank you so much to @kbsk_cic 💥 Re:Rooted has been co-commissioned by @flammcornwall with @feast_cornwall and Experience Bodmin #flammcornwall #flamm2026 #flammbodmin @creativekernowassociates @creativekernow

Great to see our project Woven voices - The bodmin dress (being exhibited in the window of Air Ambulance charity shop bodmin) being performed by KBSK dancers Hannah, Sophie and Emerald. @flammcornwall @rebecca_wood_mua @elainefostergandeyart @lovelostwithiel @iona.gandey @eveoph @lilygrace_m @effieefe @textilesincornwall @falmouthuni @make_a_mends @anneblackwellfox @rosiefrenchart @kathrynsmithart @ninaludgateart @rachelhardy8170 @kbsk_cic @intobodmin