The Sidney Nolan Trust appoints masterplanning consultants to help shape the future of The Rodd and Bleddfa Centre.
The Sidney Nolan Trust recently announced a £244,849 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to develop a masterplan for a vibrant and resilient future. The rural arts charity is pleased to announce that, following a highly competitive tender process, they have appointed a team of experienced consultants to support the organisation through the consultation, analysis, business planning, and evaluation aspects of the 12-month project.
London-based architectural practice Carmody Groarke will develop options for the restoration and future use of Rodd Court, the historic agricultural buildings, and the wider Rodd site, including the Bleddfa Centre. Carmody Groarke has extensive experience in developing and delivering major capital projects in the arts and cultural sectors, with notable projects including the critically acclaimed Windermere Jetty Museum in the Lake District and a temporary home for Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Hill House. In September, their ArtPlay Pavilion at Dulwich Picture Gallery will open to the public, constructed entirely from UK-grown timber.
Kevin Carmody, co-founding Director of Carmody Groarke, said;
“We are honoured to have been selected to work with the Sidney Nolan Trust on a transformative masterplan for The Rodd. This is a unique opportunity to shape a place that celebrates Sidney Nolan’s creative legacy while opening the site to new audiences through sensitive and imaginative design. Our ambition is to create a masterplan rooted in the landscape, history and spirit of The Rodd—one that carries Nolan’s creative legacy forward for future generations."
Carmody Groarke has partnered with Counterculture Partnership, one of the UK’s most experienced cultural partnerships, to deliver the project. Counterculture will lead on audience and stakeholder consultation, pilot activities, business planning, fundraising strategy and creative direction for the future presentation of the Trust’s collections and stories.
Hereford-based Catcher Media has been appointed to deliver the oral history aspect of the project. Catcher Media is well known regionally and nationally for its beautiful storytelling, documentary filmmaking, and media training. Catcher Media will work with volunteers to capture a range of living histories connected to The Rodd and Bleddfa, ensuring these voices are safeguarded and celebrated.
The project evaluation will be led by FRY Creative, an agency specialising in arts, culture and heritage evaluation, based in Birmingham. This project follows work with the National History Museum and Birmingham Museums Trust.
Greenwood Projects will manage the overall programme. Greenwood Projects are construction industry specialists with a depth of experience in developing and delivering projects funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Their portfolio includes arts and heritage projects, such as Birmingham Botanical Gardens, RAF Museum Midlands, and All Saints Church, Sandon. Greenwood Projects will oversee the project programme, helping to ensure a coordinated and holistic approach across the various workstreams and will support key milestones and reporting.
Sophie Heath, Director of the Sidney Nolan Trust, said:
“We were delighted that the tender process generated so much interest from highly experienced teams with national and international experience across the arts, heritage and commercial sectors. We are pleased to appoint consultants who we believe can support us in developing a vibrant and sustainable future for our sites, audiences and programmes.”
“We have already started the work of testing new activities and inviting feedback from people including at our successful Community Open Day event on 2 August where we welcomed over 345 people to The Rodd.”
There will be events and activities taking place throughout the project at The Rodd, the Bleddfa Centre and online – keep an eye on the SNT What’s On page www.sidneynolantrust.org/your-visit/whats-on/ . You can also sign up to e-news to stay in touch with the latest news and progress and follow SNT on Facebook and Instagram @sidneynolantrust.
The Trust is looking for volunteers across a wide range of activities to get involved and support the project delivery. To express interest or find out more please email info@sidneynolantrust.org
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Notes to Editors
About the Sidney Nolan Trust
The Sidney Nolan Trust (SNT) was founded at The Rodd on the England Wales border in 1985 by the famous Australian artist Sir Sidney Nolan (1917 – 1992). He was part of a close circle of artists, writers and thinkers who were pivotal in the advance of Modernism in Australia and is best known for his iconic paintings of the bushranger-outlaw Ned Kelly. Nolan moved permanently to the UK in 1953 and became an important and successful figure in the British art world from the mid-1950s onwards. For the last 10 years of his life, he came to live and work at The Rodd in rural North Herefordshire close to Presteigne.
Today The Rodd is a vibrant rural centre for the arts where the Trust cares for the world's largest collection of Nolan’s artwork and a major part of his archives. The Trust also cares for his former home Rodd Court, a Grade II* listed Jacobean Manor House and around 180 acres of farmland and woodland. Nolan’s legacy acts as the foundation for an annual programme of contemporary exhibitions, events and residencies and creative learning programmes.
The Bleddfa Centre was founded in 1974 as a place for creativity and community by pioneering British theatre director, priest, and writer James Roose-Evans in the beautiful and sparsely populated landscape of Mid Wales near Knighton. There is no village or church hall in Bleddfa so the Centre provides a vital gathering space and facility in the heart of this community. It became a well-established hub for the arts with varied facilities and inside/outside spaces and a commitment to ideas, spirituality, music, and the environment.
In 2023, following the challenges of COVID, the Bleddfa Trust merged with nearby rural arts charity the Sidney Nolan Trust, based on their shared values. Together with the community SNT are working to build and define a sustainable future for the Centre where social connection, heritage/arts provision and wellbeing can be accessed in this rural Borders locality. In 2025 Ashley Family Foundation are supporting a community artist residency at the Centre – multidisciplinary artist Simone Gilliatt was appointed in April 2025.
To find out more visit www.sidneynolantrust.org
About The National Lottery Heritage Fund
Our vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future. That’s why as the largest funder for the UK’s heritage we are dedicated to supporting projects that connect people and communities to heritage, as set out in our strategic plan, Heritage 2033. Heritage can be anything from the past that people value and want to pass on to future generations. We believe in the power of heritage to ignite the imagination, offer joy and inspiration, and to build pride in place and connection to the past.
Over the next 10 years, we aim to invest £3.6billion raised for good causes by National Lottery players to make a decisive difference for people, places and communities.
Follow @HeritageFundUK on Twitter/X, Facebook and Instagram and use #NationalLottery #HeritageFund
Carmody Groarke is a London-based architectural practice founded in 2006 by Kevin Carmody and Andy Groarke, from Australia and the UK respectively. The practice has developed a reputation for working internationally on a wide range of arts, cultural, heritage, and residential projects.
As Carmody Groarke approaches its 20th anniversary in 2026, we have a series of major upcoming completions. In September, the ArtPlay Pavilion at Dulwich Picture Gallery will open to the public — constructed entirely from UK-grown timber. This will be followed in October by the Power Hall at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester which will reopen following a major restoration — part of a wider masterplan to revitalise the museum’s historic campus. Early next year, the British Library’s new low-carbon archive will complete the first phase of its long-term plan at Boston Spa. Later in 2026, the Design Museum Gent — constructed from locally sourced Gent Waste Brick — will complete a major renovation and extension in the heart of the UNESCO World Heritage City of Ghent, Belgium. Alongside this, the practice continues work on an array of diverse projects, from the Bibliothèque nationale de France Conservation Centre in Amiens, France to London School of Economics’ (LSE) Bankside House and the heritage restoration and significant extension of the London Wall Buildings in the City of London. Completed work includes the critically acclaimed Windermere Jetty Museum in the Lake District, a temporary home for Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Hill House, and a Special Exhibitions Gallery for the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester.
Carmody Groarke’s work has been recognised through several prestigious architectural awards, including most recently being shortlisted for the EU Mies van der Rohe Award, the 2021 RIBA Building of the Year Stirling Prize, the Civic Trust National Panel Special Award 2020, the Architects’ Journal Building of the Year 2019, and Building Design Architect of the Year 2018. Four monographs of the practice’s work have been published by El Croquis, 2G, AMAG, and A+U.
Counterculture Partnership
Counterculture Partnership LLP is one of the UK’s leading professional service providers for the museum and heritage sector. We are a multi-disciplinary practice that provides governance, strategic and business planning, project management, financial, fundraising, exhibition planning, audience development and stakeholder engagement for third sector, cultural sector and not-for-profit organisations. We bring extensive experience in the arts, heritage, creative industries and learning sectors to provide highly effective organisational, strategic and financial consultancy. We work with a wide range of clients from independent trusts to local authorities, museums and arts organisations across the UK and internationally.
Our client list includes institutions such as Tate, Arts Council England, British Council, Lakeland Arts, Institute of Contemporary Arts and Hepworth Wakefield, among others. We are proud to have contributed to the significant development of institutions such as the V&A (both London and Dundee), the National Museum of Norway, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Tate Modern and National Portrait Gallery, by providing operational, fundraising and strategic advice to support ambitious artistic, operational, and capital developments.
Catcher Media
Formed in 1997, Catcher Media create high-quality films using drama and documentary to engage, entertain and inform. Expert in using participatory methods, they use film-making and creative media to engage diverse groups and specialise in health, heritage and sustainability projects.
Working with NGOs, charities, educational institutions, schools, councils and the NHS, Catcher have worked with mainstream and alternative curriculum groups, prisoners, the homeless, rural villagers, SENDi pupils and adults, dementia groups, Showpeople, Roma people, Eastern European migrants, and many more. They have worked all over the West Midlands, across the UK, within Europe, Africa and India.
Over the past 15 years Catcher have become well-known for their long-running engagement with Herefordshire heritage in a series of ambitious oral history and film-making projects that have been popular with audiences throughout the county.
FRY Creative
UK-based with international reach, FRY Creative is an evaluation, research and strategy agency established by friends Fabio, Richard and Yasmin in early 2023. They met whilst leading the evaluations for UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK and Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games Cultural Festival from under the same roof. Since then, FRY has supported organisations across the UK and the world to deliver useful and intentional work with data. Their projects aim to cut through evaluation as compliance and research as lip service, to enable meaningful and practical data-driven decision making for clients whilst fostering more transparent cultures of learning and iteration. Together, they bring decades of evaluation experience, a deep and broad understanding of working closely with cultural organisations and diverse communities, and a strong understanding of navigating and reporting to a wide variety of national and international funding bodies.
Greenwood Projects Ltd.
With nearly four decades of experience delivering Funding Support, Project Management, Commercial and Cost Management, and Principal Designer and CDM Services, Greenwood Projects brings a proven track record across sectors, particularly within heritage and conservation landscapes. Since our establishment in 1986, we have worked extensively with scheduled ancient monuments and Grade I, II, and II* listed buildings, equipping us with deep expertise in sensitive, high-value heritage environments.
As a medium-sized practice, we combine the capacity to deliver complex and multi-strand projects with the flexibility and personal approach of a close-knit team. Our structure allows us to remain agile, responsive, and fully focused on our clients’ needs, adapting our delivery model to fit the unique character and requirements of each organisation and site.
Further information
For further information, images and interviews, please contact Charlie Minskip at Sidney Nolan Trust on telephone: 01544 260149 email: charlie@sidneynolantrust.org