North Wales Creative meets Creative Wales

 

Author Tanya Dedyukhina Licence  CC BY 3.0  Source Wikimedia Commons

 

Jane Lambert

On 9 Nov 2022, I attended a meeting of Creative North Wales (Gogledd Creadigol) at the Galeri arts centre in Caernarfon.  That was not my first encounter with Creative North Wales.  I wrote about them in Gogledd Creadigol on 11 May 2021 after I had given a talk to their members on Copyright Licensing and Information and Communications Technology on 21 April 2021 (see Jane Lambert Copyright Licensing and Information and Communications Technology 13 April 2021).

The evening began with an introduction to the executive and prominent members and a review of their recent activities.  One of those was a webinar entitled Powering up the Video Games Industry which took place just before my talk.  The keynote speaker at that webinar was Dr Davd Banner MBE who is founder and CEO of Wales Interactive.  David attended Wednesday's meeting and I was delighted to meet him in the flesh. He told me that he had been in the games industry since the 1990s and we remarked on the growth of the industry over the years.

David is also a non-executive board member of Creative Wales (Cymru Creadigol) and the purpose of the meeting was to introduce that organization and its leaders to stakeholders in the creative industries in Northwest Wales.  Gerwyn Evans, deputy director of Creative Wales delivered a short presentation on its work.  He began by stating that Creative Wales had a narrower remit than the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport in that it did not cover such fields as architecture.  It occurred to me as he said those words that the United Kingdom equivalent to Creative Wales was the Creative Industries Council ("CIC") which is chaired by the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.  Architecture is indeed within the CIC's remit as well as advertising,, arts and culture and fashion which are outside Creative Wales's.

Creative Wales does, however, cover a lot:

• film and television
• music
• games
• animation
• createch
• R & D, and
• publishing.

The deputy director mentioned each of those sectors in turn and discussed its importance to the Welsh economy and the support that it received from Creative Wales.

A surprising omission in view of the importance of such composers as Catrin Finch and Jack White, dance companies like Ballet Cymru and the National Dance Company of Wales and the National Eisteddfod is the exclusion of the performing arts.   According to Creative Wales's website:

"Fine art, dance, theatre and poetry fall outside of our remit. Don’t worry, they’re not forgotten. Other organisations, such as the Arts Council of Wales take care of these essential and thriving areas of creativity."

Other parts of the UK also have an Arts Council but the arts in those other nations and regions are still represented on the CIC. 

As an intellectual property specialist, I am particularly interested in the digital industries and I was fortunate to meet Paul Osbaldeston, the digital lead sector development manager.   Our meeting was brief but it is good to put a face to a name should we come into contact again.

Finally, I was delighted to see a strong representation from the Menai Science Park which included its managing director, Pryderi ap Rhisiart,. its outreach and community manager  Emily Roberts who has recently visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tanya Jones who kindly invited me to the event.  The science park and North Wales Creative complement each other in that the park catalyses business opportunities while the cultural industries feed the mind and soul.   Both are essential to making this region of Wales one of the most attractive places anywhere in which to work and live.

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