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About

Field Notes / Nodiadau Maes CIC is a rural community arts and publishing organisation working across the Welsh and English borderlands, Gloucestershire and the Peak District. We support communities to share stories, build resilience and create knowledge together through slow, land-based and accessible publishing practices.

Founded in 2025 by Aimee Blease Bourne, Field Notes is a home for community publishing, creative consultation and participatory research. Our work is rooted in queer ecology and shaped by care, accessibility and trauma informed approaches.

We develop creative tools, training and community led archives that challenge dominant narratives about rural life. At the heart of our work is a guiding question. How does it feel to unfurl in a place where queerness, care, creativity and connection can take root.

 

Our Values

Care

We create spaces where people feel held, listened to and able to arrive as they are.

 

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Accessibility

We design processes that are gentle, flexible and responsive to different needs.

 

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Queer ecology 

We work with the land and with each other in ways that honour interdependence, fluidity and belonging.

 

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Community ownership  

We believe knowledge is strongest when it is shaped and held by the people it comes from.

How we work

Care is our starting point. It is the foundation of every project and the priority for everyone involved, including staff, collaborators and participants. We create spaces where people can arrive as they are, feel held and work at a pace that supports their wellbeing.

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Our approach to care is shaped by queer theory. We are exploring how queer understandings of relationship, fluidity and interdependence can guide the ways we support each other. This means paying attention to power, listening closely to lived experience and creating conditions where people can rest, create and be witnessed without pressure.

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We work slowly and with intention. We use land based practices that help people settle, regulate and connect. We co-create every step of the process and adapt our methods to meet the needs of the people and places we work with. Our workshops often begin with gentle arrival, movement or time with the land, followed by shared making, reflection and community publishing.

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Everything we create is held collectively. The knowledge that emerges belongs to the community and is shared back into local networks to support visibility, resilience and change.

Who we work with

We work alongside people whose stories are often unheard in rural places. This includes LGBTQIA communities, disabled and neurodivergent people, young people and others who experience isolation or marginalisation.

 

Our work is shaped by the people who take part and by the landscapes we move through together.

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We also collaborate with partners who share our commitment to care, creativity and community-led change. These relationships help us reach more people, deepen our practice and return learning back into local systems.

Our current partners and funders include:

  • Monmouth Town Council

  • Barnwood Trust

  • Wye Valley River Festival

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These partnerships support us to create accessible, land based projects that strengthen belonging, visibility and resilience across the borderlands.

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Who we are: meet the makers

Aimee Blease-Bourne

Community Artist & Founder

Jess Tanner

Creative Health Practitioner

Rachel Adams

Arts Consultant and Director

Associative Artists
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