Most Significant Change in the Oldest Town in Wales

Spending a day with Local Motion Carmarthen – I am a Critical Friend to the initiative - offered a powerful reminder of what heritage, ecology and community imagination can do when they work in concert. The Most Significant Change workshop gathered the LMC coordinating group and its Assembly, and colleagues from project funders Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Lankelly Chase among the project’s exhibition at Carmarthen Library. The stories held in that space made visible the deeper shifts taking place in the town.

The exhibition charted personal and collective journeys shaped through connecting with local heritage, the town’s green spaces, and the contemporary challenges facing Carmarthen. Participants spoke about understanding themselves differently through this work, stepping into unfamiliar territory, building confidence and experiencing emotional, social and physical wellbeing gains. These were accounts of real transformation, grounded in place and linked to a larger shared purpose.

Across my work in place, heritage and community led change, its always good to see a process where people are not only contributors but shapers of the future. Local Morion Carmarthen demonstrates what happens when agency, creativity and ecological attention become the foundations of regeneration. Most Significant Change as a methodology surfaces precisely this: why particular moments matter, how relationships shift, and how personal insight becomes collective momentum.

This is also a story of leadership. Artist Owen Griffiths has set a creative, rigorous and generous tone for the initiative. Owen’s stewardship holds together the specificity of Carmarthen - its histories, landscapes and social fabric - with the ambitious central question driving the work: What if the oldest town in Wales could model a radical future for everyone? That question is shaping practice on the ground, not simply acting as a provocation.

The workshop has also opened up a wider set of questions about how creative, environmental and community rooted approaches can drive long term systemic change. I will be developing these reflections into a longer paper on creative, ecological and community led regeneration, drawing on what Carmarthen is beginning to model for the UK.

For now, one insight stands out. Change is not only happening in infrastructure or strategy. It is happening in people: in how they see themselves, in their sense of capability and connection, and in their readiness to imagine futures that are grounded, equitable and deeply tied to place.