4theRegion members met with businesses and organisations across South West Wales to share perspectives, experiences and opportunities in the creative and digital sector.
We really believe that the creative sector has a big role to play, in creating opportunities for young people, making the region a vibrant place to live, and pooling skills and talent for the benefit of local communities!
We invited experts in the industry, including Helen Bowden, Ffion Rees from Telesgop, Racheal Wheatley from Waters Creative, and Carys Ifan from Canolfan S4C Yr Egin.
You can catch up on the wide-ranging discussion about the creative and digital sector, skills, and opportunities in our region by watching the event recording or reading the event notes.
EVENT RECORDING
Catch up on the full event recording and hear from regional organisations who are doing great work in our region’s thriving media sector. Click the video at the timestamps listed below to jump to their appropriate segment.
0:09:00: Helen Bowden, Voiceover Artist 0:30:00: Ffion Rees, Telesgop 0:24:00: Tony Dowling, Real Inbound 0:30:30: Rachael Wheatley, Waters Creative 0:57:00: Carys Ifan, Canolfan S4C Yr Egin
Educators within schools and colleges are not always the best place to know exactly what opportunities exist.
There needs to be more emphasis on the importance of Foundational courses, which are vital for experimentation and creativity.
Communication
We need to understand what opportunities are available in the region.
What networks are available out there for creatives to develop their practice?
Platforms such as Discover Creative Careers are great examples of showcasing creative and digital opportunities in Wales.
How do creatives increase their visibility in the region?
It would be great to have access to a regional creative hub and engage with local businesses.
Businesses should be thinking more creatively about how they get their message out there.
Short videos and explainer videos are becoming increasingly important on social media.
Communication and marketing are not only key for the creative sector, but for all businesses.
Skills
How do we address industry-wide skills shortages in the UK?
How can we get the message across about jobs that people may not know exist?
Businesses can take ownership of skills shortages by training and upskilling new recruits.
It’s been drilled into people to go into STEM sectors, but we also need to sell our creative sector.
As a region, we have new advantages in the digital age to tap into. The digital revolution has provided more opportunities for people to become entrepreneurs, publishers, broadcasters, etc.
Home working has presented a challenge with upskilling new creatives effectively. Ideas, concepts, and suggestions aren’t often shared as freely over digital meetings or team chats.
Venues such as Yr Egin can provide space for SMEs and freelancers across different creative sectors to collaborate.
As an alternative to home working, we could also use public libraries and spaces to work in. Paid hot-desking spaces are an immediate barrier for many.
How can we creatively think about public spaces and support innovation, design, and economic wellbeing?
Innovation
Innovation requires creativity to be successful.
Unfortunately for the creative industry, when recessions hit people tend to stop spending on design, innovation, and creativity.
We need to promote the fact that the creative industries are where money needs to be spent all the time.
How do we strengthen the industry’s resilience in the changing times, how do we address problems creatively?
Traditionally, STEM and arts have sat as separate entities, but creativity and innovation go hand in hand with sciences and other sectors.
Innovation without design is like fish without chips.
How can we ‘creatively’ balance salaries with the cost of living to make sure that entering into the creative sector is as attractive as possible?
NEXT STEPS
4theRegion supports Design Swansea, a free monthly social event for creatives, businesses and students with guest speakers. This event is ideal for creatives to network and continue conversations surrounding the sector! Follow Design Swansea on Eventbrite to stay updated with upcoming events.
We are also holding an event on the 22nd of September to continue the conversation around young people, skills, and ways organisations are empowering them. Get your free tickets for Future of the Region and share what you do to support young people in the region!
Click here to subscribe to our newsletter and select “Creative & Digital Economy” to receive updates about work from us and our partners in this space.
Please do get in touch with 4theRegion to tell us about your work in the creative and digital sector in South West Wales, or to share challenges and ideas about what more is needed.
South West Wales is home to lots of creative people and businesses. We are a region of poets, artists and performers.
The creative economy is everything that relates to human creativity and ideas, IP, knowledge and technology. So how do we support creativity and innovation in the region? What shall we create? (Pic: cottonbro)
Just look at Gwen John, Dylan Thomas, Richard Burton, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Bonnie Tyler, Michael Sheen, Catherine Zeta Jones, Rob Brydon, and Rhod Gilbert (and five of them are from the same town!).
It’s these strengths we need to build on as we set out to develop our creative economy. The creative industries are one of Wales’ top performing sectors. They have the potential to provide exciting, rewarding and attractive career opportunities, and contribute significant wealth into our regional economy.
So what do we mean by the creative economy? We mean everything that relates to human creativity and ideas, IP, knowledge and technology.
Our own membership reflects the diversity of the sector, from pianist and composer Ify Iwobi and arts and events venue the Queens Hall Narberth, through to multi-media production company Telesgop and 3D visualisation specialists iCreate, to name but a few!
Places with a strong creative economy are also more exciting places to be. Creativity makes life more beautiful and more interesting. By investing in creativity we can breathe new life into our high streets and town centres. Access to creative expression is also a great tool for improving our wellbeing, making us happier and connecting us with others.
So how can we support more creativity and innovation across our economy?
Storyteller Carl Gough believes we are the stories we tell to ourselves about ourselves. So what stories shall we tell? What shall we create?
There’s lots of creative opportunity in the region, but we don’t always shout about what we have. How do we increase apprenticeship opportunities? How do we ensure young people have the opportunity to develop their skills in a working environment? How do we ensure people looking for creative talent are target local creatives? What are the gaps that companies are experiencing? What innovators do they need? How do they find them?
Probably one of the most exciting things to happen to Swansea this year was the opening of the new Arena, the most significant element of the wider Copr Bay Phase One development. Swansea Arena will have up to two hundred performances a year, covering music, comedy, theatre and e-sports. And it’s a flexible and multi-purpose venue. 4theRegion are very proud to have hosted the first major conference there in March.
Swansea’s creative quarter is arguably centred around High Street. As late as 2019 The Sun was claiming it was one of the worst high streets in Britain. But brick by brick, it’s become one of Swansea’s smartest streets. Swansea Station has been enhanced with new benches and planters in a project led by renowned Swansea artist Owen Griffiths.The iconic Palace Theatre, which once played host to Charlie Chaplin, Anthony Hopkins and an elephant that was winched on stage, is being restored and will become a digital centre for for tech start-ups and creative businesses. Walk along the street and you’ll find the Elysium Gallery, a contemporary arts space that is the biggest studio provider in Wales, Galerie Simpson Artists, a project supporting and promoting young artists, Volcano Theatre, an innovative theatre company based in a disused supermarket, live music venues such as Jam Jar, and a host of (mostly independent) bars, restaurants and shops. Close by you’ll find the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Cinema & Co, Swansea’s only independent cinema, and Swansea College of Art, which was founded in 1853 and is part of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.
Narberth is also a flourishing creative town with many independent businesses, having been transformed by an influx of creative people in the seventies. It’s now a distinctive and vibrant place but it’s not well connected and many people don’t know what’s on offer.
Elsewhere in the region you’ll find venues such as Torch Theatre, the only theatre producing venue in West Wales, Theatr na nOg, which for thirty years has been letting young people experience the magic of live theatre, and Theatr Gwaun, an independent theatre rescued from closure by the local community.
The region also has an important role in film and TV production. Da Vinci’s Demons, and Michael Sheen’s film Last Train to Christmas were filmed at Swansea Bay Studios. You may not have heard of Tinopolis, but you’ve probably heard of Question Time, Hell’s Kitchen, Robot Wars, and RuPaul’s Drag Race? Tinopolis Group founded, and is still based, in Llanelli in 1990, produces 4,500 hours of content each year, owns thirteen production companies and a distribution company, has production bases in Cardiff, London, Glasgow and LA, and has won twenty six BAFTAs and eight Emmys.
We also have a vibrant music scene ranging from post-punk from Adwaith to traditional folk from VRï. At a time when many regional radio stations are scaling back their operations, it’s good to see XL:UK Radio’s commitment to Swansea. What sets them apart from other radio stations is the diverse programming schedule hosted by diverse and talented presenters.
In terms of festivals, Fishguard Music Festival is taking place right now. The Swansea Fringe returns in November, although for now that’s all we know about it! Next year you’ll be able to experience Westival, an underground music and arts festival deep in the Pembrokeshire National Park, rub shoulders with the artists and performers at the Laugharne Weekend, feel good in every way at the Big Retreat Festival in Lawrenny, or celebrate the expansion of consciousness and unearth something that lies deep within us at the Unearthed Festival in Solva.
Art doesn’t have to involve expensive buildings, especially when you can paint something on the outside! On frosty morning, just before Christmas in 2018, a new artwork appeared on a garage wall in Port Talbot. It showed a boy sticking his tongue out to catch what appeared to be snowflakes, but were actually flakes of ash. Banksy’s “Season’s Greetings” would quickly became a tourist attraction. Sadly, four years later, it was taken away to “a temporary highly secured undisclosed storage unit” and it’s not yet known what will happen to it.
But the artwork inspired Port Talbot’s community, thanks to their determination the subways, houses and walls of the town are more colourful than ever before! In the six months after construction workers came to take the Banksy away, sixty murals were painted in the town, some of which form part of ARTwalk Port Talbot, a street art trail app. Some of the most influential graffiti artists in the UK have been commissioned to paint murals of Port Talbot icons such as Michael Sheen and Richard Burton. Other works are by local artists such as Tassia Haines, who has inoperable breast cancer. Despite not having painted before, she covered the side of a local house with a huge neon pink dragon to raise awareness of breast cancer. She was inspired to paint the mural so that it can live on and remind people of what she was capable of doing.
The creative economy is everything that relates to human creativity and ideas, IP, knowledge and technology. So how do we support creativity and innovation in the region? What shall we create?
At 4theRegion, we really believe the creative sector has a big role to play in creating opportunities for young people, making the region a vibrant place to live, and pooling skills and talent for the benefit of local communities!
On September 6th, join us to hear from a number of experts in the industry from around South Wales, including Helen Bowden, Ffion Rees from Telesgop and Rachel Wheatley from Waters Creative. Book here
At 4theRegion we’ve been very excited about the construction of Copr Bay. Phase one of this £135m project has brought Swansea an amazing new arena (where we hosted its first major conference!), a stunning new bridge, the first new park in the city centre since Victorian times, new apartments, and spaces for food and drink businesses.
Swansea Arena lit up for our Swansea City Centre Conference on March 17th 2022 (Pic: Adam Davies)
A report by Swansea Council and main contractor Buckingham Group found Copr Bay Phase One supported 8,000 person weeks of employment, apprenticeships and trainee placements. And it was good to see that 41.5% of supply chain spend stayed in the region, with 64% staying in Wales.
The development and construction sectors offer fantastic career opportunities, and we need to think about how we get more young people into the industry.
Why is that important?
A report by the Construction Industry Training Board has found, if Wales is to meet our projected growth prospects, we’ll need to recruit an extra 11,500 construction workers by 2026. If you, or someone you know, is interested in a career, the most in demand roles will be in bricklaying, the electrical trades, plumbing, heating, ventilation and air conditioning.
Regeneration is something we should all do together. So how do we ensure major projects are designed and delivered in a way that will provide long-term economic, social and environmental benefits for our region?
And last week, Urban Splash announced a joint venture with real estate developer Milligan to transform a 5.5 acre site in the area of St Mary’s Church. Early proposals include new office buildings, shared workspaces, apartments and an area for small creative businesses to make and sell their products.
Other ideas could include transforming the Civic Centre site into a mixed use destination, anchored by the beach, with new homes and a leisure and hospitality focus, and the residential led regeneration of a site in St Thomas featuring a new terraced walk providing direct access to the river for the first time in over 150 years.
And what other development projects could be coming to the region? We’ve taken a look at just a few of them.
Could a building feed us?
Bouygues UK have now started work on 71/72 Kingsway, which will include an urban farm style greenhouse set over four floors. Plants and vegetables will be grown in water and fed by waste pumped from fish tanks at the bottom of the building! This ‘living building’ will include green walls and green roofs, an educational facility, retail, offices, a landscaped courtyard, rooftop solar panels, battery storage and gardens. Set to accommodate 600 workers, 71/72 Kingsway will be made up of the former Woolworths and a new 13 storey structure. Pobl Group will manage 50 affordable apartments forming part of the scheme.
What about somewhere to spend quality time and relax?
Swansea’s Castle Square was once much greener than it is now, and is set to return to its former glory. There will be more plants, lawned areas and trees, as well two green roofed commercial units, and a water jet feature which can be switched on or off for different events at different times.
How can old buildings be put back into use?
Old theatres and cinemas, which are have lain empty for years, are being given new life as spaces for local businesses and communities. Swansea’s Albert Hall and Port Talbot’s iconic Plaza building will also once again be entertainment venues, while Swansea’s Palace Theatre will become a home for tech, start-up and creative businesses, with workspaces for over 130 people.
How Swansea’s new city centre community hub could look (Pic: Austin-Smith:Lord Ltd)
Oxford Street’s former BHS/What! building will become the new central location for Swansea’s main library and key council services, such as housing, benefits, employability, lifelong learning, and archives. Designers say the appearance of the structure, built in the 1950s, will have an impact appropriate to a public building, with translucent cladding backlit as a beacon to attract visitors.
It’s hoped Carmarthen’s former Debenhams will also be transformed into a hub to deliver a range of health, wellbeing, learning and cultural services. It could also become home for some of Carmarthenshire’s museum collections, an exhibition space, and a welcome point for visitors to the town.
How can a building generate its own power?
That’s happening with the Bay Technology Centre! The 25,000 square foot office and laboratory space in Baglan Energy Park uses innovative design and materials, including specialist photovoltaic panels made to look like cladding, to provide a sustainable building that’s energy positive. The design also means the ‘thermal mass’ of exposed precast floor slabs can store and transfer heat from the building, providing a cost effective heating solution. The plan is to convert excess energy into hydrogen at the Hydrogen Centre nearby.
The Blue Eden project will go even further than that! A 9.5km tidal lagoon will provide the energy for a manufacturing plant, a battery facility, a floating solar array, a data centre, residential waterfront homes for 5,000 people, and approximately 150 floating eco-homes in Swansea waterfront. Blue Eden will create over 2,500 permanent jobs, support a further 16,000 jobs across the UK, and create additional jobs during its construction.
The pandemic has changed the way people think about their living space, community areas, and the importance of work-life balance. So how could we be living differently?
St Modwen wants to expand the Coed Darcy neighbourhood in Llandarcy, Neath. The huge site, a former oil refinery, is set to be home to more than 1,800 new homes, a school and shops. It will be an ‘innovative and sustainable new 15 minute neighbourhood’, where everything that’s important would be within a 15 minute walk or bike ride.
What about our health and wellbeing?
The first phase of the £199m wellness and life science village in Llanelli has been given the go ahead. Based at Delta Lakes, this will feature a new leisure centre, hydrotherapy pool, clinical and research space, and education and business space. The project will eventually feature four zones, including assisted living accommodation and clinical recovery space, spread over 83 acres. The contract with Bouygues UK included ‘the highest level of community benefits ever prescribed’, including targets for sourcing through local suppliers. It’s hoped Pentre Awel will create just over 1,800 jobs when completed.
What about innovation?
University of Wales Trinity Saint David’s £9.3m Innovation Matrix will be home to small but growing businesses. It’ll be a digital space, but with a manufacturing centre, testing laboratories and 3D printing facilities in UWSTD’s IQ building next door. The roof would feature solar panels, and the environmentally friendly building wouldn’t require any gas.
What about transport?
The Welsh Government’s flagship £200m Global Centre of Rail Excellence (GCRE) will create a hub for rolling stock and infrastructure testing, innovation, storage and maintenance at the site of the former Nant Helen opencast mine and Onllwyn coal washery at the head of the Dulais and Tawe Valleys, straddling the border between Neath Port Talbot and Powys.
It’s expected to create over 100 direct jobs, and could create many more as academic and industrial partners are attracted to the site. Featuring the UK’s first net zero railway, GCRE will include the first comprehensive rail testing and innovation facility of its kind in the world, with capacity and capabilities for rigorous testing of rolling stock, infrastructure, and integrated systems from prototype to implementation.
And what about tourism?
The steel framework of the new Hafod-Morfa Copperworks clock tower is put in place (Pic: Swansea Council)
The Hafod-Morfa Copperworks were once the largest copperworks in the world. After lying derelict for years, work started to transform it into a new visitor attraction for Penderyn Whisky. Much of the new visitor centre is now up. The roof of the powerhouse, which will include an on-site distillery, is well advanced. And contractors John Weaver will recreate the powerhouse’s original clock tower. Plans also include a shop, tasting bar, exhibition space, offices and VIP bar in the fully refurbished grade two listed building.
Regeneration is something we should all do together. We need to ensure major projects are designed and delivered in a way that will provide long-term economic, social and environmental benefits for our region.
4theRegion are hosting our next Construction & Development Sector Forum on July 12th. Meet businesses and organisations from your sector to talk about opportunities to collaborate for the greater good in South West Wales. Hear from 4theRegion members and partners about their work in the region, their social purpose, and their ambitions for the future, emerging opportunities to collaborate and support each other across South West Wales! You can register your free place here.
At 4theRegion we want to ensure South West Wales is a welcoming and safe region where everyone has the opportunity to thrive and progress fulfilling careers. Building cohesive communities is about developing neighbourhoods, social spaces and workplaces where difference is welcomed and celebrated. This involves moving beyond narratives of ‘us’ and ‘them’ towards a greater sense of trust and a shared sense of belonging.
How can businesses play a role in supporting cohesive communities? (Pic: fauxels)
Building a more cohesive society is everybody’s business. We are all part of the social fabric, the strength of which can be an important influence on our wellbeing as communities and individuals. We all have a responsibility to build and maintain the relationships, connections and understandings which make up that social fabric. Cohesion is a shared objective, in which every person, community and organisation has a role to play.
So how can we support social cohesion?
A new report from Belong looks at just that! Everybody’s Business, produced in conjunction with the Intercultural Cities Network, sets out how businesses can play a role in supporting cohesive communities, and how local authorities can support them in doing this. The report draws its findings from a series of roundtable conversations with local authorities and businesses in a number of towns and cities across the UK, including Swansea.
Belong use the term ‘social cohesion’ to describe how well people from different backgrounds mix, interact and get along with each other. Those differences can be ethnicity, faith, social class, age, gender, sexuality, or a range of other differences that might potentially divide us.
There’s lots of potential to support community cohesion within a business! Research shows that workplaces can provide the opportunity for people from different backgrounds to connect in a way that leads to more positive attitudes towards diversity and higher levels of social cohesion. If you work in a diverse workplace you’re more likely to have friends from different backgrounds, although your interactions will need to be more than passing for the effects to extend beyond the workplace.
By their very nature, some businesses represent vital social infrastructure providing opportunities for people to meet and mix across different boundaries. And the experience of the pandemic has made clear the vital importance of these shared spaces! As ‘third places’, other than home and work, they provide a venue where members of the community can interact with one another informally, and where collective space can be provided for community initiatives such as charitable fundraising.
So how can you as a business help maximise the positive impact you have?
First and foremost, recruiting a workforce which fully reflects the diversity of local communities, across all functions and levels of seniority, is necessary for any business that wants to support social cohesion.
As a business, you can promote an inclusive culture through cohesion aware management. This means creating a climate of openness and trust, ensuring demographic attributes (ethnicity, gender, sexuality etc) do not overlap with functional roles and supporting meaningful interactions between people of all backgrounds across the workforce, are key elements of workplaces that support cohesion.
You can enable minorities and diverse groups to lead innovation. Ensuring that innovation is led by diverse teams and people from under represented groups enables better understanding of the needs of communities and increases awareness of market and product opportunities that might otherwise be missed.
You can invest in social infrastructure in the local community. What can you do to support welcoming, inclusive community spaces? This could be in the course of your everyday operations or, for example, through the innovative use of your commercial property.
Businesses can also deliver added social value by supporting community organisations and initiatives which build cohesive communities.
You can do this by partnering with a local community group or charity. Imagine if more businesses were regularly twinned with a local community group or charity as part of an ongoing relationship? This could involve sponsorship or support in kind, and would help deepen the connections between a business and the community around it.
You can provide direct support through employee volunteering. You can enable more employee volunteering which aids charities, community groups and hubs supporting community life and bringing people together. This helps to connect employees to the community and to people from different backgrounds.
You can localise your supply chain. By applying the ‘think local’ principle to as much of their supply chain as possible, businesses can extend more opportunities to the local community, and help to strengthen the networks of social and economic ties that can support cohesive communities.
And, wherever possible, you should evaluate the impact of work that you’re doing to support social cohesion.
It’s great to see the report citing our members Gower Gas and Oil as example of what businesses in the region are already doing! The heating services company has led a variety of initiatives to address social isolation. The #DontDanceAlone social media campaign, in partnership with The Wave and Swansea Sound, has raised awareness of isolation amongst older people and helped raise money for older people’s charities. Gower Gas and Oil also help coordinate the Gower Isolation Support Group, which helps ensure that isolated older people are visited regularly, with a view to ensuring positive social and health outcomes, which was particularly important during lockdown.
And what can local authorities do to support businesses to do all this? The report says they can provide leadership by being clear about how businesses can support local cohesion objectives and playing a coordinating role in helping them do so. They can incentivise businesses to act through highlighting cohesion outcomes in their approach to procurement and social value, and by recognising businesses that do this well. And they create an evaluation framework based on local needs, providing a robust and rigorous framework for evaluating cohesion oriented activity that businesses carry out, including shared measures and reporting.
Everyone has a role to play in building and maintaining cohesive communities. And it is particularly good to see a report which focusses on the often under appreciated role businesses can play in supporting social cohesion. If you’d like to find out more about how businesses can be a force for good, join us at the Introbiz Expo on April 7th!
4theRegion is an alliance of people, businesses and organisations across South West Wales, who love where we live and want our region to flourish. We connect people, share good news and enable collaboration, through our forums, events, projects and comms, for a future that promotes the wellbeing of people and planet. Support our movement and be part of the solution!
A graduate and a staff member from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David have been successful at the Swansea Open 2021 art exhibition at the Glynn Vivian Gallery in Swansea.
Swansea Open is an annual art exhibition held at the Glynn Vivian gallery. The exhibition is open to people living and working in the SA1-SA9 region and can be from any background. Each year the selection is made by a different panel of invited selectors which encourages diverse viewpoints annually. This year, Caroline Thraves, UWTSD Swansea College of Art’s Academic Director for Art and Media, and Professor Uzo Iwobi OBE, and an Honorary Fellow of the University were the invited selectors.
Caroline Thraves said,
“It’s been an absolute pleasure to select the work at the Glynn Vivian. I know Swansea’s full of artistic talent, and many of that talent comes from the Swansea College of Art. It’s fantastic to see the diverse range of art that’s here from 3D art to painting and drawings, and it was hard to select a winner amongst these entries.”
The first prize was awarded to Suzanne Callen, a member of UWTSD’s Student Services department (specifically working in Art and Design) for her oil on canvas painting named ‘Sabina’. The work really stood out for the judges, and Caroline Thraves added that there was something in the way that the portrait looked at them, through the eyes that told a story, and they were really drawn to that.
Suzanne Callen said,
“I entered the competition with the hope that my painting would be selected to be hung. It was a total surprise when my name was announced for the first prize, it was very emotional. I feel this award has given me the confidence boost needed to continue on my creative journey and validates the skills and abilities we have in Students Services.”
Suzanne is a true advocate of lifelong learning, and before lockdown she had attended an introductory oil painting course at UWTSD. During lockdown, Suzanne re-found her love of drawing portraits, and managed to create over 120 charcoal portraits and started using different materials such as ink, watercolour, pastels and finally oil painting as her artistic development continued.
The winning work ‘Sabina’ 2020 was inspired by traditional artists techniques which are used in a contemporary way.
She adds: “There is a lot of reflectivity at the time in this painting and my need to have that connection with the face to look at them in detail rather than the virtual. Sabina looks out from the canvas as we were looking out of our windows at what was happening in the world. The grey background almost oppressively hangs heavy around the individual. The plain background with hint of light source has now become a signature of my work. The floating frame creates the impression that there is more than the surface to survey and draws the focus to the ‘boxed-in’. The painting captures a moment in time when senses and emotions were heightened, and my own creativity was re-unleashed. The situation of working from home gave me the opportunity to release this, it has allowed me to use my time productively not just for work but for my own creative self-development. I’m on a journey which many people have followed and am loving the process as it unfolds.”
Sabina – 1st prize winner in the Swansea Open 2021 Art Exhibition
In addition to this competition, Kate Bell and Anne Price- Owen, from the Friends of the Glynn Vivian were invited to select a winner for the ‘Friends Award for Swansea Open 2021’. The prize was awarded this year to UWTSD Fine Art graduate Owain Sparnon for his work ‘Trwodd draw yr wyf yn edrych/ I’m looking through you.’
Owain’s work was described by Kate Bell as being: “very ambitious which is abstract in its nature, but shows huge depth and gravitas, a lot of colours, a lot of mixed media. The way that he has created the composition, the marks on the canvas really caught our eye.”
The winning piece, ‘I’m looking through you’, was a painting created as part of a series of works for Owain’s degree show. It’s one of five paintings of that scale and it was made in response to things Owain comes across daily – things such as photographs, landscapes, reflective lighting, and sounds. Layering, unravelling, intertwining and decontextualising an image were crucial to the process. The work is a combination of paint, collage, and sculpture as Owain is intrigued by the boundary between painting and sculpture. The painting reveals recollections, thoughts, secrets, and experiences of his subconscious through colour, remnants, texture and the unknown.
Owain said,
“Winning this award is a great privilege and I am delighted to be exhibiting my work at the Glynn Vivian Gallery alongside talented artists from the Swansea area. I have been very fortunate to have several opportunities since graduating which have really helped me to continue to develop my artwork – I won the Josef Herman Foundation Award in memory of Carolyn Davies a few months ago, my work was recently exhibited at Mission Gallery as part of the Artist in the World exhibition and since October, I have worked as an artist at Swansea College of Art after being successful in the Artists Benevolent Fund’s Step Change Fellowship Programme. To be able to continue working at Swansea College of Art, and to have a studio for myself where I can experiment and develop my artwork, is an invaluable experience.”
Swansea College of Art Lecturer, Gwenllian Beynon said,
“I am delighted to see Owain succeed and get credit for his work by winning an award at the Glynn Vivian open exhibition so soon after graduating in the Summer from the Fine Art course. Owain works his practice with a focus on working by focusing on printing and mixed media. When he was a student Owain studied a little through the medium of Welsh, and it is clear from seeing his career develop that that is important to him. It’s great to see our graduates succeed and be known for their art outside the College of Art and the University.”
Professor Sue Williams, Programme Manager of Fine Art: Studio Site & Context said,
“It is excellent news that Owain has won this award and we, the fine Art staff in Swansea, would like to congratulate him. Owain deserves this acknowledgement as his work is authentic and original. Owain’s work reveals a great passion and commitment to the language of material and surface, and I am in no doubt we will see more of Owain’s exciting and provocative work in the future.”
‘Everyone Deserves A Christmas’ has gone live with a video of their Christmas single ‘O Little Town Of Bethlehem’.
This reimagining of the classic Christmas Carol features a duet between, Mal Pope and Steve Balsamo, with support from Harry’s Youth Theatre Choir Swansea and the Morriston Salvation Army Band.
The video starts with a spine chilling opening monologue from BAFTA winner Michael Sheen and ends with a special message from OSCAR Winner Catherine Zeta Jones. The video also features appearances from Davina McCall, Max Boyce, Elis James, Penny Lancaster and Bonnie Tyler.
The video was Art Directed by BAFTA Award winning Production Designer Edward Thomas, recently returned to Swansea following a year in Malta designing a new Steven Spielberg Film.
The single is taken from the album ‘Christmas with the Pope’ and is available to stream and download from all streaming sites including Spotify, iTunes and Amazon Music. The physical CD will be available from select shops or via mail order. Details www.malpope.com
As well as inviting everyone to download and stream the single we are making the video available free of charge to groups to use over the festive period and asking for donations to be made to…
