This is a project description for our ACE grant application
*New project partner is Herefordshire Council’s Rotherwas Archive and Records Centre and the Rotherwas Together, as well at Hereford Museum and Art Gallery’s River Project being organised for the Gallery’s 2027 opening. These new partners link the project with archives and contemporary work relating to The River Lugg/River Wye, including hydrology, the history of the rivers, farming and the river.
The Watercourse Way is a place and community based visual artist commission, socially engaged workshop and exhibition program, connecting people in the West Midlands to their local water networks and an ideascape of reflections. Using watery art processes as a fluid methodology of elemental working, we will explore the notion that we are water. In the Tao, water is ‘the Way’; the source and power that sustains the world. We know that our bodies are two thirds water. In embodying watery principles, we can discover a better way of living.
Pervasive metaphor of water… water as the highest good. Water is a metaphor for the Way (Tao) or the source and power that sustains the world. For example the sage will go around obstacles rather than aggressively confront them – just like water
Alan Watts ‘Tao: The Watercourse Way’
Project outline
The project themes include: water and its edges, lakes, ponds, streams, rivers, canals, clouds, aquatic plants, pollution, health of waterways, water in the atmosphere, water as the unconscious mind, our body’s water. The approach is also watery in the sense that we are exploring through painting, writing and film the wisdom/element of water and flowing as a way of being; using art processes that connect the body, breath, and wellbeing.
This a place based program which connects people across Herefordshire, Birmingham and the Black Country with the water and landscape near them, including the River Wye at The National Trust’s The Weir Garden, River Lugg with the Leominster Cultural Consortium, Ward End Park Lake Birmingham and the canal network in Birmingham and the Black Country.
All the project’s commissioned artists (images below) Sally Payen, Jaime Jackson, Stephen Whitehead and mentored early stage career artist Pearl Colette will all work with the community groups on the co-produced artwork ‘The Watercourse’.
The relationship that children and adolescents have with water goes beyond its basic function in daily life. Water is an element that awakens emotions and feelings in people, both individually and collectively. Diana Wiesner Nature of Cities Festival

Salt Road is part of Arts Council England’s place based peer learning network we will share our project updates on this network. We will also link the project to the Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) WMCA community group engagement network which we are part of in partnership with the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA), appointed by the government to work with the people of the West Midlands to develop a regional Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS).

Our lead artists Jaime Jackson and Dr. Sally Payen have a strong track record in producing high quality environmentally themed studio artworks and socially engaged co-production practice.

















The artistic results of our project will be:
1. Five new sets of artists’ artworks about water to be exhibited as pop up exhibitions, as part of the engagement practice.
1.1 Motion and movement with film dance and motion capture to create a digital installation.
1.2 Using art writing and researching watery ideas, creating an online blog, leading into a textile’s artwork.
1.3 Experimenting and exploring water issues on large scale watercolours, placing people who work with the health of water into the work.
1.4 A series of paintings exploring environmental issues and well-being about the river.
1.5 A series of paintings linking bodily blood and lymphatic networks with water courses through landscapes.
2. A socially engaged co-production artwork with artists and communities through workshops: Watercourse’ Inspired by influences from traditional Chinese ideograms, characters, and contemporary emojis. Participants will be invited to paint and create their own ideogram/emoji, inspired by water and the flow (painting as embodied slow breathwork). Brought together for a large-scale painting.
3. Pop up exhibitions of artworks in public spaces where we hold our workshops.
Our aim is to help people find ways of dealing with personal stress and eco-anxiety by unlocking their creativity by exploring people’s local water networks.
We have long known that connecting with nature in green spaces is great for our mental health. Now fresh research is showing that time in blue spaces – by the coast, rivers and even fountains in the park – is even more restorative. Catherine de Lange – New Scientist