Treescapism
As temperatures in Cardiff reached 38°C in the last week of June 2026, Splott's streets bore the heat without relief. Thermal imaging of adjacent streets had already recorded what that means on the ground: surface temperatures running up to 20 degrees higher on unshaded stretches than beneath even a single mature tree canopy a short distance away. This is not a meteorological accident. It is the compounded result of decades of underinvestment in the places that need trees most. Coed Cadw, the Woodland Trust in Wales, commissioned a creative team to make that case directly, in Splott, with the community at the centre.
Client: Woodland Trust
community engagement
immersive film
creative scripting
participatory art
environmental communications
What we did
We made a film the size of a three cinema screens, projected across three walls of a cavernous hall and filled with the voices and visions of the community it was about.
Across several months of workshops, Jodie Bond (Landed Futures) worked alongside filmmaker Chris Britten and artist Eleanor Greenwood to gather testimony, make art, and listen to more than 70 Splott residents. Two currents kept surfacing: a real and tender love for the trees that do exist in this place, and a clear-eyed anger at the injustice of there being so few. Both are in the film.
"Our love is not soft
It is hot as our shadeless streets
It burns with hiraeth
For boughs and barkFor the monochrome streets
For our industrial scars
Our love is the shape of what is missing
The enaid an unplanted tree
The shadow that never fell
The birdsong that never learnedthese streets were worth visiting
Our love is as clear
As the injustice"
The resulting work screened for the first time in late June 2026, projected immersively at Splott Community Volunteers, free and open to the public, at the heart of the streets it was made to champion. The film moves through the impact of the ward's industrial past, its present condition of heat exposure and environmental disadvantage, and into a heartfelt call for trees receive the same status as any other public health infrastructure.
Coed Cadw describes communities like Splott as "tree deserts," where a critical lack of canopy leaves residents disproportionately exposed to extreme heat, air pollution, and the long-term health consequences of both.
"Everyone should be able to experience the benefits that trees bring to our everyday lives," said Jacinta Challinor, tree equity lead for Coed Cadw. "In some communities, a lack of trees means hotter streets, dirtier air and fewer opportunities to spend time in green spaces."
The Tree Equity Score tool, developed by American Forests and used by the Woodland Trust to assess UK neighbourhoods, rates Splott among the lowest-scoring urban areas in the country. It combines data on canopy cover, air pollution, income, employment, health outcomes and temperatures to identify where action is most urgently needed. Splott sits near the bottom of that list.
On the day the exhibition opened, residents were sourcing thermal imaging cameras to record real-time surface temperature data for submission to Cardiff Council. Art and evidence, in the same building, on the same day.
The difference it made
The exhibition launched directly into the city's most acute heat event of the year. Policy makers listened to more than 70 Splott residents give their testimony, played back at scale, in their own neighbourhood, on the warmest day on record. The exhibition showcased Splott's community making its own case for what it deserves, at a volume and a size that refused to be missed. The community's push for tree planting commitments from Cardiff Council is ongoing. Treescapism put the human cost of that fight on film and held it up for the city to see.
The exhibition was reported on by the BBC and attended by key Members of the Senedd, local councillors and the Office for Future Generations Commissioner.
