“Winning Zealous Amplify: Environment with my film Allowed has given me more confidence” – Zillah Bowes

Zillah Bowes is a Wales-based filmmaker and multi-disciplinary artist who works mainly across film, photography and poetry, as well as installation and sculpture. Her work is often rooted in nature and frequently explores our relationship with the natural environment.

‘ALLOWED’ by Zillah Bowes

Zillah came across Zealous through applying for an open call with her film ‘Allowed’ and subsequently followed our social media pages. ‘Allowed’ was then submitted to our initiative Zealous Amplify: Environment, a contest designed to celebrate the most impactful works related to environmental themes. Zillah felt it was quite rare for a competition to be dedicated to environmental works, as well as it being free to enter with a cash prizes and opportunities to be features in print in collaboration with ‘Artists Responding To’.

Powered by Zealous, Amplify celebrates work on a variety of different topics in the hopes of creating meaningful dialogues and supporting various charities. Zealous Amplify: Environment supported Arts Catalyst, a visual arts organisation and charity based in Sheffield, UK, who are enabling people in South Yorkshire and beyond to engage in creative experiences that increase ecological awareness, encourage positive social action and open up new ways of learning about the world around us.

Zillah found using Zealous incredibly easy to use. With the ability to create projects, works can be submitted to multiple opportunities seamlessly.

My experience has always been positive. It is easy to create the template for a project and then use it to apply to several opportunities, which is useful as it saves time.

‘Allowed’ is a film using 3D-animated photographs of wild urban growth in Cardiff, Wales. Plants and flowers are allowed to grow wild, with green spaces uncut, inviting new pollinators and wildlife. Following a lyrical spoken journey through the city, ‘ALLOWED’ re-examines our relationship with urban plant life in the context of biodiversity loss and the climate crisis.

After winning Zealous Amplify: Environment with her work Allowed, Zillah has gone on to be successful with several other opportunities and take part in different projects through Zealous.

“Winning Zealous Amplify: Environment with my film ‘Allowed’ has given me more confidence.”

Zillah is currently working on her new film project Sweet Loss, a collaboration with two other artists (UK/Hong Kong) for Film London, g39 and Videotage, as part of the British Council’s Spark Festival in Hong Kong, with further events to follow in the UK. She is also continuing work on her Future Wales Fellowship, a climate research programme with the Arts Council of Wales, as well as developing her fiction film projects, including her debut feature film. Photographs from her moonlight project Green Dark will be showing in Change Horses Midstream, a group exhibition with Hypha Studios at their London HQ, opening on 24 October. The exhibition considers the idea of change at three levels: change with nature, change with others, and change with self.

You can find more of Zillah’s work on her website and Instagram.

Bethan Jayne Goddrd

Community Manager

More Insights

`