Wharfe And Worth, Our Rivers…
Conduit presents two exhibitions – Know Your Worth and Wharfespeed – inspired by the rivers Worth and Wharfe, and featuring new paintings and community-created artwork. They celebrate our connection to rivers and inspire action for their recovery, harnessing the power of art to instigate change
Know Your Worth
Keighley Civic Centre, North Street, Keighley, BD21 3RZ
5 - 26 September (Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri) 9am - 4pm
Showcasing work made by workshop participants, alongside Anji’s painting.
Exhibition Launch: Sat 5 Sept, 3pm - 5pm
Clean River Group Launch: Tues 15 Sept, 6pm - 8pm
Would you like to be able to swim in the Worth and the Aire? Come along to this launch event and find out more about how you might get involved in a new clean river group. It’s supported by Aire Rivers Trust, Friends of Damems, Ilkley Clean River Group and Keighley Town Council, and will include a discussion with artists and activists Amy-Jane Beer, Rob Cowen, and Boff Whalley about creative campaigning.
Wharfespeed
Ilkley Manor House, Castle Yard, Ilkley, LS29 9DT
12 September - 18 October (Sat & Sun only) 11am - 4pm
An exhibition of Anji’s new large scale, immersive river paintings, alongside community-created artwork and displays from Ilkley Clean River Group, Yorkshire Water, and Right to Roam.
Exhibition Launch: Sat 12 Sept, 12pm - 3pm
With performance by Commoners Choir, music from Latterhand, and a screening of Mark Barrows’ underwater film The Kingdom Beneath The Current about life in the river Wharfe.
Wharfe Stories: Sun 27 Sept, 2pm - 3pm
An afternoon with storyteller Vickie Orton
Poetry and Readings: Sat 3 Oct, 2pm - 3.30pm
An afternoon with poets and writers Rob Cowen and Amy-Jane Beer, including a discussion about rivers and the Wharfe.
Live Painting to Music: Fri 9 Oct, 7.30pm - 9.30pm
An evening concert of a new river composition from Latterhand with live painting by Anji
TICKET LINK coming soon
The Project
I'm a landscape painter, but memory and intuition are fundamental to my process, I layer paint expressively capturing fleeting moments and memories of places and experiences, thinking about mood, atmosphere and the layers of history. As an outdoor swimmer I especially love the rivers that stitch our towns together and connect them to wilder landscapes beyond. They are my ongoing obsession. I love the symbolism of rivers flowing on forever and connecting past and present.
I live on the Worth and I swim in the Wharfe, both are beautiful rivers, both flow from the Pennine moors above through steep sided valleys. The Worth is a tributary of the Aire, which goes on to flow parallel to the Wharfe through the industrial heart of West Yorkshire. The first cotton mill built in Yorkshire still stands by the river Worth in Keighley.
Together with other river-loving creatives we’ll inspire environmental action, celebrate local histories, create exciting and vibrant work, and contribute to cultural regeneration in Keighley and Ilkley. Along the way we’ll develop connections and harness the knowledge of partners Ilkley Clean River Group and Aire Rivers Trust to develop a campaigning group for the middle Aire catchment. Ilkley Clean River Group campaigned successfully for Wharfe at Ilkley and worked with Yorkshire Water on the river which became the first stretch of river in the UK to be awarded bathing status. We’ll start a campaigning group for the Aire.
Workshops:
Expressive Landscape Painting with music with Anji and Latterhand
Eco Photography, and cyanotype in the landscape with Louie Haslam-Chance
Damems Nature Reserve on the river Worth
Who Is Your River? Character Design with Leonie Briggs at Worth Valley Primary School
This is a start. I want the same for the all rivers, as outlined in The Universal Declaration Of The Rights of Rivers but I’ll start here in West Yorkshire with the Worth and the Aire!
Workshops are an integral part of my creative process… I love teaching, and facilitating others to connect to nature and their landscape through art, with mindful observation and expressive journaling and painting techniques.
I run workshops independently and with local organisations to encourage people to get outside and enjoy their local area, whether that is out on the moors, down by the river, or in town. I believe this helps them to feel more invested in their place, and more likely to want to help take care of it. Fly tipping, pollution and neglect can make some local places seem unpleasant and even scary, but a little work together can transform them and grow pride and enjoyment and community connection.
Art is a brilliant way to develop observation skills and to encourage people to slow down. I’m looking forward to partnering with Keighley Town Council, Keighley Creative, Get Out More CIC and Aire Rivers Trust by the Worth at Damems to really embed this philosophy.
My creative partners
Leonie is already a firm favourite of the families of Keighley! Her imaginative world is so joyous and filled with warmth and familiarity. She remembers exactly what it feels like to be a kid and so kids love her regular Saturday workshops at Keighley Library.
Leonie is well known for her character design and leading our Who Is Your River? workshops she’ll use all her skills to encourage people to create a character to represent the Worth as they see it.
She’s deeply devoted to Keighley and has experiences the healing power of the Worth herself everyday as she walks down to her studio at Keighley Creative where she’s been involved in many community projects including the Rombald’s Rocks Sculpture trail and The Mega Drawing Box
Louie Haslam-Chance is a young local photographer who makes poetic but accessible work exploring place and memory. His work is a deeply personal response to the environment and he uses experimental photographic techniques with handmade sustainable developers and expired film.
His quiet, environmentally thoughtful approach to his work in local edge lands and becks is a way to mindful mental wellbeing and gentle connection to nature for our workshop participants. It will also introduce them to Photohub North in Keighley where they can continue to develop their photographic interest after the project ends.
Louie has been involved with several projects in Bradford including his brilliant project Mucky Beck for OUR TURN festival (Bradford 2025)
Rob Cowen is an award-winning writer and poet, hailed as one of the most original voices on nature, place and people. His first book, Skimming Stones, won the Roger Deakin Award from the Society of Authors. His second book, Common Ground, was shortlisted for the Portico, Richard Jefferies Society an the nation’s favourite nature books of all time in a BBC poll. His follow-up, The Heeding, was the best-selling debut book of poetry in 2021. His latest book The North Road has been described as a ‘masterpiece’ and a ‘dazzlingly inventive work of literature’ and debuted as Book of the Week in the Observer, Financial Times, Telegraph and New Statesman. Rob was born in Ilkley and now lives in North Yorkshire.
Amy-Jane Beer
Dr Amy-Jane Beer is an award-winning author, biologist, naturalist, and campaigner. She is a Country Diarist for The Guardian, columnist for British Wildlife. Her last book, The Flow: rivers, water and wildness, won the Wainwright Prize for nature writing and her latest A River Running Through You is a collaboration with illustrator Elin Manon. Amy is a codirector of the Right to Roam campaign and honorary President of the national park society Friends of the Dales.
Join me, Rob and Amy on October 4th at Ilkley Manor House for a reading of brand new and older work and a rivery discussion about the Wharfe.
Latterhand are sound artist and violinist Ian Tothill and artist and musician Phil Moody . Until 2024 they were known as These Men.
Their site specific audiovisual work explores the nature of the environment and how it can be reimagined. They perform in a wide variety of spaces such as theatres, galleries, clubs, public parks and more. As artists in residence they use a wide range of visual art media to work with people collaboratively.
I’m so excited to be collaborating with them on outdoor workshops at Damems Nature reserve by the Worth, and on a Live music and painting concert at Ilkley Manor House on October 7th
To listen to their previous work please visit their website www.latterhand.com
The mills of this now quiet, green place rose and fell within 150 years. 150 years is no time at all in the deep time of these valleys. So the river continues, just as the glacier that carved these valleys did thousands of years ago, gradually regaining it's meander and grinding stone imperceptibly, atom by atom into gravel and sand, and with every storm the river moves the stones a-ways and eventually they will sink back into the ground they were once delved from. This goes on day and night, I can hear it from my window, whatever our concerns or preoccupations, the water toils on. There's a comfort in that. It was here before humans came, it will be here long after we've gone.
Sponsors
Keighley Town Council
Bradford Culture Company
LCF Law
Friendly Framing
Simon Stell
Partners
Aire Rivers Trust
HATCH Projects
Ilkley Manor House
Photohub North
Get Out More CIC
Supporters
Wallace Seymour Fine Art Products
Ilkley Literature Festival
Yorkshire Water
Ilkley Clean River Group
Timothy Taylors
Hewenden Mill
Letters Of Support From Partners
-
![]()
Keighley Town Council
-
![]()
Ilkley Manor House
-
![]()
HATCH
-
![]()
Aire Rivers Trust
-
![]()
Ilkley Clean River Group
