From Source to Sea

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Over the past year, artist Jess Balla has been exploring our relationship with waterways and their interconnected ecosystems, from source to sea. Her work looks at how we relate to the natural world and what affects that connection.

This sharing event brings together artists, ecologists, and organisations working along a river’s course to the coast. Through visual displays, short presentations, and informal conversation, the evening will flow between creativity, community, and ecology. Guests are invited to move between tables and displays in this interactive, multisensory event. It will be a chance to meet the artists and organisations involved, exchange ideas, and celebrate the connections that run through our environment.

Featuring: Jess Balla, Manon Awst, Rosie Farey, Rhodri Owen, The Wild Oyster Project, and North Wales Rivers Trust

About the artists

Jess Balla
Jess Balla is an illustrator, mural artist, and creative practitioner working across Wales and the UK. Her projects often emerge from close collaboration, combining commissions and community workshops with research into ecology, social systems, and local stories. She is particularly interested in how our relationship with the natural world is shaped, and sometimes disrupted, by the structures around us. Her postgraduate research focused on the intertidal zone, using seaweed as a lens to explore connection, adaptation, and resilience

Manon Awst
Manon is an artist based in Caernarfon with a sculptural and performative practice rooted in her local landscape. From the patterns of peatland to the textures of the intertidal zone, she explores the ways in which materials stick to and transform locations and communities. Her current exhibition CORSIO at Swansea Collage of Art brings together her recent work on Welsh fens and bogs, proposing fluid definitions of sculpture and collaboration. She's a Henry Moore Institute Research Fellow 2025 and has been selected to represent Wales in Venice at the Biennale in 2026 in collaboration with Dylan Huw.

Rosie Farey
Rosie is a rush basketmaker from the Elwy Valley who teaches across the UK. An important part of her practice involves gathering and harvesting all the materials she uses for her weaving. Her primary material is common Clubrush, which grows in slow-moving, muddy rivers.

Rhodri Owen
Rhodri works with folklore, old Welsh knowledge and personal ideas of belonging to land and to place within his creative work. He is currently a part of the Gofod Glas project, creatively exploring people’s relationship with clear water in the Afon Conwy catchment area – a river that passes by his home and his workshop in Ysbyty Ifan where he was raised.

The Wild Oysters Conwy Bay project
 #NNF3 Connecting Conwy is a collaborative partnership between Bangor University and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), funded by the Nature Networks Programme (Round 3) through the Heritage Fund on behalf of the Welsh Government. Running from August 2024 to March 2026, the feasibility project explores how we can restore and reconnect marine habitats across the Menai Strait and Conwy Bay — from estuary to reef, source to sea. Working closely with environmental regulators, coastal partnerships, and local communities, the project is laying the groundwork for long-term seascape recovery that supports both biodiversity and the people who depend on it. As part of this engagement journey, the team has been working with artist Jess Balla to creatively explore the connections between land, water, and community through the Source to Sea / O’r Tarddiad i’r Tonnau project.

North Wales Rivers Trust
The North Wales Rivers Trust is a non-for-profit organisation that works to conserve, protect, and improve the rivers, streams, and wetlands in North Wales. Its objectives include restoring habitats, improving water quality, enhancing biodiversity, and educating the public about river conservation. The trust carries out practical restoration work, organises community projects, and conducts research to address issues like pollution and invasive species.