Led by Dilwyn Davies of Theatr Mwldan
These notes are representative of the participant's views and do not necessarily reflect the views of Wales Arts International.
Dilwyn Davies opened the discussion by posing the question of what constitutes a hub? Suggestions included:
• A place/group that nurtures commercial entrepreneurship
• Provides guidance and information
• Helps to link and co-ordinate information across artforms for the locality / territory.
Esko Reinikaien spoke about a ‘new world order’ post investment review, one of venues, artists and organisation that are on ACW funded radar and organisations that were not. He wanted to look at non-traditional players in the industry who will play a role e.g. engineers, philosophers and so on. He stated that society was moving out of the information age to a networked age.
Yvette Vaughan Jones suggested that a hub doesn’t pre-suppose what clusters around it.
Dilwyn Davies questioned how everyone could possibly be included? There was reference to the fact that there had been no details in the Hub Strategy document
Kiran Ratna said she felt hesitant approaching ‘organised bodies’. She would like a database of artists and a ‘chat room/facility’ on which ideas and invitations for interested parties to get in touch for collaborative projects.
Ann Sholem was concerned that Creu Cymru would no longer exist, who have experience of dealing with networks.
Yvette Vaughan Jones described the process of collaboration beginning with intelligence gathering, then research and development of ideas, relationship building, visit, designing of work, creating partnerships, doing the work, feeding back learning. She stressed that it needs to be seen as a cycle not just ‘an event’. She suggested that one of the functions of hubs might be to gather intelligence from projects and feed it back to the local industry.
John Gower commented that he felt there was a lack of joined up thinking between artforms. They speak but don’t join up the thinking. He felt the need for physical hubs, like Wales Millennium Centre where artists and performers ‘bump into each other’. He also raised the issue that two hubs: Llangollen and Hay were victims of the investment review. He felt it important that Wales didn’t lose them, if that happened then there would be a serious possibility of retrenchment.
Angharad Wynne spoke about the importance of physical spaces where artists congregated or met. Wales Millennium Centre had been designed with this in mind, and as a result, a number of collaborations had been developed over the last six years between the resident companies. The same is true of a number of artist movements or groups in our history – they have flourished around a central meeting place / hub.
Esko Reinikaien spoke about the difference between open and closed networks; that is those that anyone is free to join and those that are constructed and managed by organisations or individuals e.g ACW. These tend to work with ‘members’ or in ACW’s case RFOs only.
Ingrid Murphy liked the fact that you could join social networks without being in a physical hub.
Dilwyn Davies stated the need for old fashioned face to face contact as well as social networks.
Mary Lloyd Jones spoke about her experience of attending the Smithsonian Wales Showcase. She said it was a superb networking opportunity as there were so may great artists and performers from Wales there. Could this be replicated annually in Wales? The Eisteddfod might do this to some extent, but it tends to attract Welsh speaking artists and performers in the main, and not across all artforms.
Back to International Forum 2010
