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What Avant Cymru have made in the Rhondda Valleys isn’t a showcase or a programme or a platform event. It’s evidence. Evidence that community and art are not separate categories. Evidence that hip hop and ballroom and breakin’ and band music belong together. Evidence that Wales has something urgent and joyful and alive to say, and that it knew exactly how to say it.
Let’s start with the electricity. Welcome to Our Woods ran power from nearby streams through a hydro station and into this event. That’s not a metaphor, though it works beautifully as one. The energy that powered the breakin’ battle, the beatboxers, the Lewis Merthyr Colliery Band, the rap cyphers — it came from the land the performers were standing on. The stage was built from wood. New trees were planted. Nothing here was borrowed from somewhere else.
That groundedness — that absolute commitment to place — is what makes this event different from a hundred other well-intentioned community arts films you might scroll past without pausing. This one makes you stop. It makes you pay attention, because the people on screen are paying attention to each other.
Filmed in the Rhondda Valleys in South Wales, this climate-conscious community jam brings together breakin’, rap, ballroom culture, beatboxing, live music and experimental dance in a way that feels expansive rather than fragmented. What could easily have become a loose collection of performances instead develops into something much warmer: a portrait of community held together through creativity, movement and shared space.
There is something quietly powerful about creative work that feels genuinely rooted in the place it comes from, and Avant Cymru’s contribution to the C Venues Digital programme captures exactly that spirit.
Filmed in the Rhondda Valleys in South Wales, this climate-conscious community jam brings together breakin’, rap, ballroom culture, beatboxing, live music and experimental dance in a way that feels expansive rather than fragmented. What could easily have become a loose collection of performances instead develops into something much warmer: a portrait of community held together through creativity, movement and shared space.
One of the most striking details is that the event itself was powered using hydroelectric energy generated from local streams through the Welcome to Our Woods project. The stage was constructed from wood, with new trees planted as part of the process — sustainability not presented as branding, but woven naturally into the structure of the event itself.
The outdoor setting gives the performances an earthy openness that suits the work beautifully. There is a strong sense throughout of culture growing directly out of lived experience — football pitches becoming performance spaces, rap cyphers unfolding with honesty and humour, and dancers carrying both competition and friendship side by side.
The breakin’ battle becomes unexpectedly absorbing, drawing the audience fully into the question of who might win, while still maintaining a generosity of atmosphere. Equally memorable are the appearances from the Welsh Ballroom Community, whose performances and workshops bring another layer of expression and celebration into the piece. A group of young dancers weaving their own style into the event becomes one of its warmest moments.
What lingers most, however, is the sense that the makers and audience are equally important to the event’s success. Graffiti art, embroidery, dance, beatboxing and music are treated not as separate disciplines but as connected forms of contribution. Even the closing photographs of participants and audience members reinforce the feeling that this was not simply a show to watch, but a gathering people helped create together.
Someone says during the event, about movement — about the way a good dancer never lets the energy drop: it never ends flat. And neither does this. The whole thing keeps shifting, layering, finding new registers: graffiti art alongside embroidery, the band alongside the beatboxers, the formal breakin’ competition alongside unscripted moments of people simply enjoying being together. It refuses to pick one version of itself.
Featuring performers including Lewis Merthyr Colliery Band, Beatbox Hann, Beattechnique, Jay Bowler, DJ Silence, DJ Jaffa and UK Breakin’ BBoys and BGirls, the event demonstrates how digital performance can still carry genuine local texture and collective energy.
More than a filmed showcase, this feels like an honest act of cultural connection — a reminder that art can still create spaces where communities recognise themselves and each other.
What Avant Cymru understand — and what not every maker of community arts understands — is that community is not content. Community is a practice. It’s the decision to make the event with people rather than for them, to let the audience become part of what’s being made, to trust that the space between performers and spectators is where the real thing happens.
This film captures that space. It captures it in a valley in South Wales, powered by streams, built from local wood, and full of people who know that culture isn’t something that arrives from elsewhere. It’s already here. It already was.
Featuring: Lewis Merthyr Colliery Band · Beatbox Hann · Beattechnique · Jay Bowler · DJ Silence · DJ Jaffa · UK Breakin’ BBoys and BGirls · MCs: Truth, Vision, Charlie J, OJ Skeng, Jambo, DNA · Choreography: Hayley · Fusions: Eliette · Welsh Ballroom Community
Produced by Avant Cymru | Edited by Larynx Entertainment
avant.cymru · facebook.com/AvantCymru · instagram.com/avant_cymru
Watch this as part of C Venues Digital Programme here
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