Welcome to Charlotte's church, at The Dreaming, Rhydoldog
Charlotte Church is a goddess. Of calm and contented containment. She has the aura of someone who has found her true place in the world — as Queen of The Dreaming at Rhydoldog, in the rugged Elan Valley. Those who have been lucky enough to witness Church whip the crowd into a frenzy at her live music events (that life force energy!) take fair warning. For while she can — and does — tear up the dancefloor and electrify any stage she sets foot on, there has been a change to the Charlotte Church that we (think) we all know and love. For the first time, she is holding space for herself.
At the time of interview, the media is filled with the news that Charlotte will be appearing in the first celebrity version of BBC’s The Traitors. She is, however, tight lipped about the much-anticipated series, set for release in October 2025.
“I can’t say anything!” she laughs. “I’m not telling anyone a thing!”
I try to tease out some information by asking if she thinks that she has a super-power she could employ to help her win The Celebrity Traitors?
“Working on The Dreaming has softened me up and made me more empathetic… but I will say that in The Celebrity Traitors, I do employ humility.”
You heard it here first fans. I’m taking that as a clue to watch out for this coming autumn.
I ask her about the fascination that is Claudia’s fringe. Can it really be that perfect all of the time? With the Scottish weather! The humidity! The wind!
“Claudia’s fringe is perfect,” laughs Charlotte. “Claudia's everything is perfect. She is magnificent. She's very dry, so funny…”
From Charlotte’s scrubbed kitchen table to mine — we participate in the interview via Zoom — she starts to explain to me the idea behind The Dreaming. A stunning Arts and Crafts home set amidst 47 acres, and formerly the home of Welsh designer and businesswoman, Laura Ashley.
Church has totally renovated the property, whilst staying sympathetic to its bones, and made it into a nature-based health and wellness retreat. If you haven’t streamed the show documenting all of her and her team's hard work, then do take a look at Charlotte Church's Dream Build. The series, which airs on Really and discovery+ is totally addictive, and a favourite in the View HQ office.
Breaking it down to me as “another way to live,” The Dreaming is the opportunity, she says, for everyone — not just an entitled few — to learn how to live well.
We’re speaking with Charlotte to kick off our new article series Olion — the Welsh word for traces and mark-making — talking to some of Wales' influential women, and asking them what matters now and what of the Wales they are shaping. I ask her if she can tell me about the places and traditions across Wales that have shaped her own sense of identity and community as a Welsh woman.
“Hmmm… let me percolate on that for a minute,” she says, with neither pretension nor pretence.
“Every Saturday I would go to a club called The Boardwalk when I was a kid, and I would go with my Bampi, my grandad, and everybody would bring their sheet music, and there'd be an organist and a piano player, and everybody would get up and do their songs, and it was loads of oldies singing.”
I ask what her grandfather’s song was: “Yeah, my Bampi’s used to be Cheating Heart and What A Wonderful World. [Those times] were the first time that I ever sang. Yeah, but I used to absolutely love it.
“And then I suppose you've got the little rituals of having your microwave dinner on your lap watching the Gladiators…
“Growing up in Canton, Cardiff, to a family who were just not outdoors-y in any way, shape or form, it was very much about the community: the church socials, the Robin Hood pub, the school, some dance classes, and then just the family. We'd meet up with extended family — loads of us, fifth and sixth cousins — really regularly and just have a ball. They were the sort of little rituals that were all in and around Cardiff and never really outside [in nature]…
“I think that, in the last ten years, my life has become far more intertwined with natural spaces and the land and its own rituals.”
She is full of vigour as she talks, as if lit from within. She has so clearly found her place in the world at Rhydoldog. “I could talk for a million years about it,” she says laughing merrily; catching herself in the enthusiasm of the moment and leaning right into it. It’s lovely to see. I can’t remember another time when I have seen her this open and relaxed. Comfortable in her own skin, and sure of her path.
I suggest to Charlotte that in the same way that she was shaped by the rituals of her working class roots in Cardiff as a child, she is now influenced by the lands of Rhydoldog, and the rituals — both new and old — that those lands have seen. The Dreaming employs therapies that hark back to the old ways of being, in terms of wisdom and tradition, ceremony and ritual. So, one could say that they are essentially the way in which we as humans once were — how we used to live. We have just forgotten.
“Yeah that’s it exactly,” she agrees. “It’s all a process of remembering, really. Actually, all of this wisdom, all of the knowledge that we need in order to heal ourselves and the people that we love — and the community at large — is already within each of us. We are our own most powerful healers. But we've been so disconnected — purposefully — over millennia. So disconnected from that innate divine ability…
“And sometimes I think that you just need somebody else who has total faith in these ancient practices and… ways of knowledge and wisdom that we all can hold.
“Something reawakens in people, and they start to find their own way and then they are truly on their own healing path. I think that a huge part of my work now at The Dreaming, and in my music and in my life in general, is about re-indigenising ourselves to this land.”
We discuss seeing the world through the lens of First Nations peoples, whose culture has less separation from their ancestors, from their traditions, from their rituals, from their stories.
“That's certainly been my way into [a new way of being]. I didn't all of a sudden go: 'Okay, I'm going to be more like the Welsh druids.'”
She did her research. She tells me about a phrase in Aboriginal culture, collective sensem (sense): “When we’re too atomised and caught up in our own individual minds, of course there’s no way we can hold what needs to be held. It’s only in the collective that all the pieces of the puzzle come together.”
We talk about the Indigenous Shipibo-Konibo people of the Amazon basin and her studies of the Dagara tribe in Burkina Faso. She describes speaking with Aboriginal people in Australia and exploring their creation myths. “These are the things that led me back to understanding,” says Charlotte. “My role here at The Dreaming is to help us piece together what we do have…”
“It’s about remembering, and in my belief it’s also about not being dogmatic—about these scraps and pieces of information we have from our ancestors on this land and how they might have lived. It’s also about creating and co-creating ceremonies and rituals for each other, whatever people are going through. At The Dreaming, one of my offerings was to create a space for ceremony. The ceremonies people created there were so beautiful—mind-blowingly tender, grief-stricken, and full of layers and layers of meaning. I love that this is the direction my life is heading in: being able to hold ceremony and ritual for the community.”
I ask her what it has been like balancing the needs of The Dreaming with the wider local community. “We work with the Fathom Trust, who do a lot of social prescribing with GPs. People with mental health issues are prescribed time spent in community and nature. They come every Monday and have access to all the outside land. I also think, as our programme grows, we’ll be looking to hold space that’s more about apprenticeship and mentoring—particularly around food growing, sustainability, and agroforestry. Hopefully, in time, we can become a real beacon of great practice for what’s needed to birth this new world into being.”
Given the theme of this series of articles, we talk about the concept of legacy, something that she struggles with, seeing it as a typically patriarchal philosophy, “but if there’s one thing I hope to leave behind, it’s that life really is so much better on the other side — once you’ve connected with nature, resensitised the heart, and moved away from numbness, separation, and disconnection. It’s painful at first, but so much better afterwards. Life becomes richer, fuller, more colourful… there’s more delight, more joy, more dancing, more celebration. And so there we are — that’s what I hope to leave people with.”
I then ask if she feels that Wales is claiming or reclaiming her voice in new ways through music, grassroots movements, entrepreneurship or spirituality.
“I think that Wales has always been an extraordinarily powerful land. I mean, look at our flag — there’s dragons here! I think there is so much kudos to the Welsh language and the advocates of Welsh language through the ages, who have fought tooth and nail to keep that alive, and now it is growing again.
“So much of our culture is held in the language and in the songs, the stories, the identity, and the spirit of the land. The magic of the land is kept alive in those ways. I think that I'm also really proud of the diversity that I see, particularly in South Wales. I'm really proud of the integration of communities that I see particularly around Palestine.”
We talk about how the architect Buckminster Fuller’s quote can be applied to life:
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
“Instead of going to these Goliath institutions, created by western society, and trying to change them incrementally,” says Church, “I’m creating something outside of that… something different to consider. Society as a whole is suffering deeply, and this is cathedral thinking—it’s not going to be just little old me. This is probably hundreds of years of work that I hope those after me will carry forward.
“I think what’s required lies in the microcosm, the cellular, the small, the community, the relational — that’s how we’ll do this.”
What is the future for Wales, I ask. How can we support her to grow in a positive way?
“Hmmm, interesting. I mean, I think I can be idealistic. So the way I talk is all light, all potential of possibility.
“I deeply understand there is a huge amount of pain and suffering — both for individuals and within societal structures. I think we need to realise that separation is the enemy. I see the future of Wales as a far more connected Wales. First, I mean individuals connecting to their innate selves — their souls, their emotions, their sense of expression, freedom, and beauty within themselves — so we’re not all trapped in this ‘you’re not enough’ consumerism paradigm.
“The next step is connecting with the people you love, healing the separation, wounds, and pain within your relationships — and then within the wider community.
“So that’s where I see Wales in the future. It’s not about broad strokes for me. I also think we’re small enough to be an amazing experimental ground. We do have a lot of land, a lot of biodiversity. We're f****** it up at a serious rate, but there is a way we could be a shining beacon again — a progressive, holistic, sustainable, earth-based, nature-based, relational way of living.”
I speak to Charlotte about the women who came before her — family members, female leaders, activists, practitioners, or change-makers who are paving the way — but, as is often the case, whose stories aren't always widely known, particularly as women. I ask: how does she see herself in that lineage?
“Okay, I’m going to keep this to my family members. I’d say my mother and my auntie, who are both still alive, and my grandmother, who passed away in 2017. As women today, I think it’s difficult for us to really comprehend the cost of patriarchy. When I feel into the shape of my nan’s life, my mum’s life, and my auntie’s life, they were — and have been — radicalised by the patriarchal mind and turned against their own in very subtle and insidious ways.
“And I think that creates huge conflicts within individual women. They’ve had to weather more than we can ever imagine.
“We talk about patriarchy as a very generalised term, and often in terms of the now, but I think all those women who came before us — and indeed all those men, because let’s not beat around the bush — patriarchy is terrible for men too — have paid a great price.
“Of course religion is included in that, and how patriarchal religion is, and what that means for women’s bodies. I’ve got Irish ancestry, so in terms of what was happening over there — with premarital sex and the children from those relationships — I have so much love, empathy, and gratitude towards those women.
“Pain is passed down the lineage as generational trauma. I’m able to have breakthroughs in understanding and realise their pain, knowing that because of their suffering, I can enjoy liberation.
“I honour all three of those women. My mother, my auntie, and my grandmother. I think they’re extraordinary and fierce — as fierce as that Welsh dragon on the flag! Women of the dragon!”
As a recent relocator to the Vale of Glamorgan (I’ll never be a local), I’ve come across news of Charlotte and her full moon silent discos — dancing by moonlight next to the sea. Sounds like bliss. I ask what inspired her to create these events.
“Our project, Awen, which offers democratic learning for all, doesn’t receive any funding. We run access for everyone — free of charge, for one hour. That’s non-negotiable. So we have to fundraise because nobody will fund us; it’s seen as education, which is a statutory provision.
“So we’ve got to be creative. It’s also about providing that space to be out in nature. We’re by the beach, breathing in the charged ions of the ocean in the air. We’re dancing, expressing. People are curated amazing music to dance to. It feels like a celebration of life. I think lots of people believe their dancing days are over, or that they only dance when drunk — but actually, it’s so beautiful to realise you can dance sober, in the daytime, whenever you want. That’s beautiful.
“I’d love to do more community stuff, but I’m chocka. I’d really love to start a collaborative vocal improvisation thing — maybe as a workshop. Barry has so much beauty on its doorstep. The parks are amazing, the coast is stunning, the churches fascinating — I think there’s real potential for us to come together as a community.
“What I love about Barry is the great community here already. People doing lush, interesting things. I love the high street.”
I ask my final question: What would you say to your younger self?
“Hah! I’d say to my younger self — You are f****** astonishing. You’re doing f****** great. Stop worrying. You are a child of the universe.”
This conversation with Charlotte Church is a part of our new series called Olion, the Welsh word for traces and mark-making — a new series of conversations with some of Wales’ most inspiring women. We explore the marks they’re leaving on the world around them, the traditions and ideas they’re carrying forward, and what matters most to them in this moment. Together, we reflect on the Wales they’re helping to shape and the legacy they hope to leave behind.
