In January 2016, the arts community in Cardiff launched the Cardiff Without Culture? Campaign. The aim was to reverse intended cuts of £700,000 to the city’s arts budget. The campaign succeeded.
This was an unprecedented result. No other city in the UK had mounted an arts campaign of this scale. Let alone achieved its goal. Equally unprecedented was the way the arts community came together for the first time across different constituencies –discussing, mobilizing and organising with each other as well as non-arts groups and movements.
The campaign brought people together around a specific goal: a desire to safeguard the city’s culture from funding cuts. But austerity isn’t going anywhere soon. Since Brexit, Wales is likely to be in for an even tougher ride. So what are the implications for the arts, and what actions might create agency in the future?
Cardiff With Culture: Visioning the City is a day of exploration and dialogue to examine these things. We want to ask ourselves:
If we campaigned to safeguard the city’s culture, what are we safeguarding in the long term? What’s our vision for the city’s cultural landscape in 5, 10, 20 years?
What are the ongoing implications of austerity for the city? What does a sustainable culture look like?
What are the conditions unique to Cardiff that enabled us to galvanize quickly and effectively? How can we mine this potential in the future?
How might different movements and groups work together? What are the opportunities that campaigning together gave rise to?
What ongoing dialogue do we wish to have with local government, seats of power, decision makers, about the arts?
Speakers and contributors joining us include Professsor Paul Haywood, Deputy Dean of Middlesex School of Art an Design; Freee Art Collective; Made in Roath; Cardiff People’s Assembly; and contributions from Cardiff residents and artists who were involved in the campaign…
There will be workshops, presentations, discussion and a social in the evening.
This is not just a day for artists or people working in the arts. It’s for anyone interested in issues of culture, austerity and sustainability. It’s about exploring the relationship between art and activism, and asking what ‘activism’ might look like.