Y Pwyllgor Diwylliant, y Gymraeg a Chwaraeon

Adolygiad Polisi: Cyfraniad y Celfyddydau a Chwaraeon at Adfywio Cymunedol

Wales Association of Community Artists

Creating Communities Situated at a major cross-roads in Ferndale, the Valleys town 22 miles up the Rhondda from Cardiff, Trehonda Chapel has been restored - not as a chapel but even so, something just as essential to this hard-pressed community. It's now a space for activities run by Rhondda Arts Factory, one of hundreds of community arts projects achieving impact and success in the South Wales valleys. Community Arts is a Welsh cultural success-story but not a uniquely Welsh experience. Wherever depressed societies are looking for means of regeneration - in Belfast or Brazil, Trinidad or Tanzania, Wakiki or Wales -community arts can provide a way forward ... and back upward. A recenty published Joseph Rowntree report "Creative Regeneration" focuses on: "ten impressive projects in Wales, a part of the UK with a growing reputation for Community arts excellence" .These projects are shown as a means of regaining self confidence, fostering pride in an area and promoting neighbourhood solidarity. Says Lyra Saldhana, formerly Director of Cardiff and District Multicultural Arts Development" (CADMAD): "People of all ages and background are taking part. They are voicing their interests and needs and it feels like there is a new energy in the cultural life of communities" So how do the Community arts achieve this? Sociologists may talk of "empowerment", "ownership" and "self-sustaining societies", but in plain man's terms - and this is very much about the plain man, woman and child - community arts is about people using above all human resources, talents and ideas to keep communities alive. Why through the arts? "If society creates an environment that allows the individual to develop his creative activities, the reduction of poverty is feasible" says a UNESCO report on Culture and Development (1995). Because the arts, as a means of expression, offer informal, non-threatening opportunities for individuals and groups to act and fulfil both for themselves and their neighbourhood. Formal and academic qualifications often exclude those who, given a creative opportunity, can show real talent. Not the arts - they give an individual free rein to try him or herself out. One of the early practitioners of this approach to social problem-solving through an art form was the Brazilian Augusto Boal with "Forum Theatre" His participatory theatre technique uses plots and situations immediately recognisable as the stuff of real conflicts and crises in their everyday lives for members of the audience, who will usually be from disadvantaged and socially excluded groups. Boal encourages these audiences to join his professional actors in the development of the "play", and work out their own endings. Participants are helped to work towards solutions which will apply to their own difficulties.. The transition from the dramatisation to the real world is then not so difficult. A similar approach is found in the work of "Valley and Vale Community Arts", who produce poignant videos in the village of Betws up in the Garw Valley above Port Talbot, here in Wales. Again, by coincidence, a converted Baptist chapel opens up a new world for the kids, who are the main participants. I asked Guy Edwards why a song he had composed was entitled "Nothing's As It seems" "Out of work again, I sat at home with my guitar and tried to explain my continuous disappointment and anger". To counteract the devastation, boredom and crime following closure of the mines in the 1980s Valley and Vale's community video projects are designed to offer a creative opportunity to young people already fearing exclusion, even while they are still at school or at the beginning of their working lives. As in the Boal tradition, their videos relate to community problems. "Sam" is a 'a powerful and moving insight into the effects of a young girl's death on her family, friends and the community' and the story is acted out on film by her friends. "What If......", another powerful production, is about domestic violence. It comes with a workbook - devised by the youngsters - with role plays, "write your own poem" and other awareness-raising activities on the potential pernicious effects of anti-social behaviour. I watched a video shot on Heron's Bridge beach, by seven or eight autistic children from a wide variety of cultural communities - Somalis, Yemenis and others. Some of them were also disabled. By seeing themselves on video these children realise they have talent, and realise themselves. They become local "stars", whose stardom can be captured again and again, as the videos are played both within and beyond their own local communities, sometimes as far away as Bridgend and Cardiff. Even Welsh Assembly members were treated to a sampling of them at an "Arts and Business" event in the Assembly building. "I can bring in the disabled and autistic and create a real performance" explained Lizzie about the Heron's Bridge clip. Lizzie, the project's dancing tutor, is one of the four permanent staff at Valley and Vale's two centres. Another sequence - "B.R.A.T.S" - "Betws Rappers against Teachers"! brings out the children's feelings about school - and their talent for rap! "We believe everybody has a right to express themselves and a right to be creative" says Alex Bowen, Director of Valley and Vale Community Arts."Video and animation are very popular and accessible for young people - they see their words and pictures come to life on the screen immediately and get a real buzz out of making their own TV" Like any feature film the medium spawns a whole enterprise with actors, design and production teams, marketing, and all the other components of a business. These are some of the "range of talents" found in the young, and nobody asks if you 've got a diploma to do this or that. You get on and pull your weight. In the summer the project runs an arts and media school to build on skills already developing. As you can imagine, motivation is high! Funding is an essential and ever-present issue in these projects. "Arts Factory" in Ferndale, sells its services. Like "Valley and Vale" it provides project related training but has also become a business centre in its own right, or, more accurately, a whole series of businesses run by professionals assisted by teams of volunteers. The businesses include a flourishing (and expanding) garden centre, graphic design (producing the centre's highly professional publicity and monthly magazine) as well as woodcraft and masonry/mosaics. The "Factory" also provides social services such as child-minding , legal advice and job search facilities to its 1300 "members". Individuals from the community pay a "membership" of £1 per year to access these. At the same time they can attend classes in any of the business areas, as well as stained-glass making, interior design, self- defence, and so on. Some go just for pleasure, others are interested in developing skills that fit them for employment in local community businesses or beyond. The "Factory" is funded through income earned by selling its enterprise products, bringing in about £200,000 per year; grants and, most significantly, training and services contracted out to social services or other nearby communities, bring in a similar figure. Charitable trusts, New Deal Programmes and EU funds cover the group's £800,000 per year budget, but "Juggling the funds requires a fair amount of fancy footwork" admits Steve Cranston, their energetic and passionately enthusiastic Chief Executive. The enterprise culture generates revenue, and, more importantly, self-sustaining enterprise skills which roll on into more businesses bringing income for individuals and the community. "Rhondda Arts Factory" employs professionals as well as volunteers - an essential mix to produce the high quality goods these projects survive on. Voluntary or not - 43% of Arts Factory's volunteers are long-term unemployed. 30% are disabled or have learning disability, 12 % are single parents. - these people are no amateurs. The other quality they all have in common is that they feel of use to the communities to which they make a definite contribution, while their "employer" gives them training in confidence-building, self-esteem and leadership.. A poignant anecdote is told by Lina, who runs the masonry and mosaics workshop: "We were commissioned by a nearby community to provide a decorative centrepiece for one of their reclaimed parks. The local Council had some design suggestions, but we asked the community themselves and they insisted on their own mosaic idea. Unlike other artefacts supplied by the Council, this one has never been vandalised. The community "own" it, and have come back to us for more. There is a real community partnership emerging here." And Dorothy, a volunteer in the graphic design department told me: "I've got a lot to give, but I've got a lot to learn too" The Trehonda Chapel even incorporates a Citizens' Advice Bureau; so why "Arts Factory?" I asked Cranston "The name's a bit funky, but it has served us well" but he is increasingly inclined to focus on environmental issues with his sights now firmly set on a wind farm at the top of the hill. His successful battle to save Trehonda Chapel from the bulldozers and developers suggests he - and the "Factory" - will succeed. Wales is no stranger to social devastation, disappointment, even tragedy. The mining and steel industries brought all of this and more; their departure just reinforced the pain. Recent closures by the steel giant Corus at Ebbw Vale and Llanwern are just another hammer-blow in a long history of industry outside the control of the communities themselves. Community Arts, apart from all the social and personal gains described here, offers a new way of attracting inward investment into these communities. We are not talking, of course, about huge multimillion inward investments by Japanese, American or Dutch companies, but public and private funds in partnership with the talent latent in the community. A combination of these can bring enterprise and strength that will remain in Wales and grow, rather than uproot and away when global economics gets tough.