The Wren Revival

Oswestry, north shropshire

Every year on the Winter Solstice, the streets of Oswestry fill with noise, colour - and someone dressed up as a giant wren.

In 2024, Meg revived Hela'r Dryw - the Hunting of the Wren - alongside Welsh folk musician Elin Gittins. While the old tradition once saw townsfolk catch a wren to bring luck in the new year, Oswestry's version turns that on its head: the bird is celebrated, not caught, and the community instead chases one lucky local in full wren costume from pub to pub.

The response has been huge. Seventy people came the first year; three hundred came the second.

For the 2025 edition, the day expanded to include a series of talks ahead of the procession. Local historian Caroline Malim shared a local folk tale and archaeologist John Swogger explored the geography of the borderlands. One woman, 71 years old and a lifelong local, said she had never known whether she felt Welsh or English, but that after John's talk, she finally had the right word: Border.

The day itself brought together:

• A procession through town, with group singing and the crowning of the Brenin y Coed (King of the Woods), awarded to the adult and child with the best woodland masks

• A performance from the Bulgarian Folk Dance Society

• A shared supper cooked by Ben Wilson of OsNosh Community Kitchen

• A Twmpath dance and open mic

Hela'r Dryw has since been featured in Zakia Sewell's Finding Albion: Myth, Folklore and the Quest for a Hidden Britain, and in Meg’s podcast, ‘Heart and Stone’.

The Gathering House is a storytelling supper club, where friends, acquaintances and strangers gather around the dinner table and share stories and ideas. 

The concept of this supper club combines the Scottish tradition of the Ceilidh Houses with the Italian tradition of sharing thoughts and events of daily life over food at the end of the day.

The first supper club, held at Nourished Communities in Islington, was a book-sharing event, where diners were invited to bring a book, share why it moved them and leave it for someone else to pick up and enjoy.

What is it to reclaim? What is it to resist erasure? What is it to carve out your place in this world? To demand, silently, loudly - to be seen, to be heard? 

The InBetween Collective (co-founded by Meg and Karma Abudagga), hosted a weekend art exhibition in London to celebrate what it means to ‘Reclaim’. Bringing together twelve artists from across the UK, Palestine and Morocco, this exhibition invited contributors and visitors to unearth personal and cultural loss, contemplating and reframing it as a communal, and often celebratory, act of reclamation. 

The weekend also saw them host workshops, including a manifesto-writing session, a collage workshop, and a listening session with the Palestinian Sound Archive.