Supported by Arts Council of Wales and Cardiff School of Art & Design
Conference to launch Cardiff Design Fortnight
In recent decades the link between artistic endeavour and the creative industries have become recognised as central to the economic as well as cultural health of the country. As Wales braces itself for another period of austerity and financial stringency in the second decade of the 21st Century, how should policy makers respond? How can sector organisations such as the Arts Council of Wales help in turning a period of adversity to our advantage? In the 1930s the visual arts took on a new lease of life and there was also the ‘first flowering’ of Welsh writing in English, through the work of such authors as Rhys Davies, Jack Jones, Idris Davies, Gwyn Thomas and, of course, the poets Vernon Watkins and Dylan Thomas. The 1980s, another period of hardship in Welsh economic life, witnessed a further burst of creativity, this time associated with television, the launch of S4C, the production of a number of landmark television series on Welsh history, and the emergence of influential Welsh rock bands such as the Stereophonics and the Manic Street Preachers. Can we anticipate a comparable artistic response to hard times in the 2010s to the one that occurred in the 1930s and 1980s? This conference marks the launch of the 2010 Cardiff Design Festival.
Key note speaker: Peter Lord: Wales’s leading art historian
Cardiff Design Fortnight Launch, Senedd, 4.00pm - 6.00pm