Community flag project, Flash, 2025–2026
Once Upon a Flag
Flash sits high in the Staffordshire Peak District, often called the highest village in Britain. It wanted a flag of its own. Not one designed at a distance and handed over, but one that came out of the village itself. The way there was talking and making: a run of workshops at the village hall, where people told the stories that mattered to them about the place, and drew, and built, and argued the pictures out. Those sessions became the Flash Flag.
The Place
Flash is a small village set high in the hills, often called the highest in Britain, with a strong sense of itself. A flag is a plain thing to want and a hard thing to get right. It has to belong to everyone who lives there, which means it cannot start from one person’s idea of the village. It has to start from the village’s idea of itself.
The Workshops
So the work began with talking. A series of sessions at the village hall, open to the community, sat around tables with materials to hand. People brought the stories, the landmarks, the weather, the animals, the things that make Flash Flash. Some of it was said out loud. Some of it was drawn, cut, modelled and pinned up. The point was to gather what the place meant to the people in it, in their own hands.
From Stories to a Design
The sessions produced a lot: sketches, symbols, colours, half-ideas. The next task was to hold all of it and find the shape underneath. The recurring images, the ones people kept returning to, became the language of the flag. Drawn together into a single design that the room could recognise as theirs, rather than a compromise nobody wanted.
The Flash Flag
The finished flag carries the village in it. A shield split blue and green for sky and hillside, with the things the workshops kept returning to: a cloud and a raindrop for the weather that comes with the height, a moorland bird, a hardy sheep, and a striped jug marked with a lightning bolt for the name itself. Under it all, a banner: Britain’s Highest Village. Made properly, as a real flag, and taken back out to the place it came from. Held up on the moor above the village, it reads at a glance and holds up close.
Where It Lives
Before the flag was finished, the work behind it went out on the Outside Arts market stall at the Buttermarket in Leek. Drawings, models and half-formed symbols on a table, and me there to talk to whoever stopped. It put the process in front of people while it was still moving.
The finished flag lives at Flash Village Hall. It has been out since, used at the church flower festival. The village kept the thing it set out to make, and the story of how it got there.
Commission a Similar Project
This is participatory work: bringing a community into a room, gathering what a place means to the people in it, and turning that into something they can keep. Flags, but also signs, prints, artworks and events, made with a place rather than for it.
If you are working with a community, a parish or a group that wants something of its own, this is work Mark takes on.
Questions
What was Once Upon a Flag?
A community project to make a flag for the village of Flash. Run through a series of talking and making workshops at the village hall, where residents gathered the stories and images that became the Flash Flag.
How was the Flash Flag designed?
By the community, in workshops. People shared what the village meant to them and drew and made responses. The recurring images were drawn together into a single design, so the flag came from the village rather than from one designer.
Where is the Flash Flag now?
It lives at Flash Village Hall. It has been used since it was finished, including at the church flower festival.
What is on the Flash Flag?
A shield split blue and green, with a rain cloud, a moorland bird, a hardy sheep and a striped jug marked with a lightning bolt for the name, over a banner reading Britain’s Highest Village.
Who can run a community flag or emblem project?
Mark Jermyn at Moderate Studio runs participatory projects like this, working with communities to make flags, signs, prints and artworks rooted in a specific place. Contact jermyn@moderate.studio.
Selected Work