Capturing Cardiff. Cardiff and the Arts: a Dysfunctional Relationship?

[Tom Knight]

As a modern European capital city, Cardiff aspires to be a place which both attracts and nurtures modern Welsh culture. Physical evidence of the local and national authority's commitment to this aim can be found in every area of city. Public art works enliven the streets. Modern art spaces, bankrolled by public money, have become symbolic of communities. Broad civic developments, designed to appeal to the huge influx of media companies and creative industry that Cardiff has seen over the last two decades, are now intractable features of the urban landscape.

But is all as well as it seems here? Warnings of a serious financial crisis at the Millennium Centre, the flagship development for the arts in Wales, is just one factor giving rise to a quiet crisis of confidence. And in speaking to the handful of working artists in the city, a bleak picture emerges - one of a city, privileged with abundant pedigree, potential and resources, struggling to marry aspirations and reality.

'A Miner' by Robert Thomas - Queen Street, Cardiff.

Just over a year ago the controversial Wales Arts Review, chaired by Elan Closs Stephens, proposed the creation of a new Arts Strategy Board in the Welsh Arts Council. Prompted by early reports of underperformance and high levels of debt within Wales’s most prominent arts institutions, including the relatively new Wales Millennium Centre, the Stephens report suggested that the board could address, among other things, "strategies for developing the arts economy.”

The subsequent consultation response from Cardiff Council affirmed its own commitment to this vision of “sustainable creativity and artistic excellence across the professional and community arts.” The council’s response also said that public access and participation were “paramount to the future success” of the arts throughout the whole of the country.

Many weren’t convinced. Adrian Browne of BBC News Wales suggested that the report offered little in terms of a long-term strategy for the arts in Cardiff.

“The solution is a classic Welsh public sector compromise,” he said. “Get two opposing forces together in a committee and sprinkle a few other organisations around the table.”

As Browne and other sceptics would probably point out, the question of sustainability still looms large over the arts in Cardiff, and it is a crucial one.

This much is clear: the arts are not declining in Cardiff. They are obviously not. Every street in the city centre, and around Cardiff Bay especially, public artworks of international quality can be admired by all. Art is everywhere – the slideshow below demonstrates the dynamism of Cardiffian culture.

What’s more, the experience of the Chapter Arts Centre in Canton (to which the National Lottery have recently granted £1.75 million to fund an expansion program) proves that centres of artistic creativity have not only cultural value but can be commercially successful in the city, given the right business model.

A (very) quick tour around the Chapter's gallery space.

“Hairy Pete” Chipping, who travelled with his sculptor friend Ed Harrison from west Wales to the walls of Cardiff Castle to assist in the creation of what he hopes will become the world’s largest love spoon, said that Cardiff was the natural place for artists to create interest in their work.
“What better place than Cardiff Castle for this?” said Hairy Pete. “We have people stopping as the walk past, asking what this is all about. We’ve managed to blag over two thousand pounds from Cardiff businesses, and we’ve had a lot of interest from the local media.”

To see a video of Ed Harrison at work, click here.

But what else is clear is that frustrations are beginning to accumulate. Conversations with other working artists around town reveal that many feel a real sense that the city is failing to fully capitalise on its position as capital of Wales. The broader controversy of funding in the arts, which extend obtrusively into Cardiff, belies a more fundamental problem.

What’s missing, many say, is something that would be a magic bullet to heart of Cardiff’s highly publicised problems – a naturally developed market for art, such as that which exists in London, Edinburgh, Paris, Berlin, or almost every other capital city in Europe.

The newly-graduated MA students at UWIC told me as much at their degree show at the abandoned bank at 113 Bute Street. Whilst admitting that his work was hardly marketable, "Skelly" (click to view interview excerpt) suggested (predictably, perhaps) that the local authorities should do more to support students financially, the aim being to create a sustainable “home grown” community of artists in the city which would collectively raise Cardiff’s profile in the international art world, bringing new investment.

Hamza, who is the resident artist across the street in the Butetown History and Arts Centre, sees things from the same point of view. Originally from the Sudan, he spent many years living in a leaking attic, scratching out a living as one of the very few working painters in Cardiff. Speaking before a rare coming-together of local artists (an exhibition he organised to benefit those suffering in the country of his birth) he said that the city is unable to raise awareness among buyers in the market for art largely because of its comparative newness and disparity among the artistic community.

Muhammed Hamza, the resident artist at the Butetown History and Arts Centre, explained why life is difficult for working artists in Cardiff. Click on image to hear interview excerpt (opens in new window.)

Hamza touches on a sore point. Cardiff has always, historically speaking, contended with an identity crisis. Whether or not conflicts will eventually give birth to sustainable creativity, or simply further widen the black hole into which public money for the arts is being poured into year on year, remains very much still to be seen.

[matthew yeomans]

I think this is excellent. A story that flows and makes sense to the reader combined with innovative and complementary photos and audio. What I really like is that you've used all the media elements to create something that works really well together online.