This exciting initiative, funded with support from Cardiff City Council through the Shared Prosperity Fund, aims to bring together communities by creating nature-rich urban environments which will support biodiversity, re-energize public spaces through creativity and allow diverse residents to connect with the natural world, and with each other.
‘Greening Cathays’ will achieve this through working with the local community to deliver a number of activities. This includes:
- An engagement project working with local school children to raise awareness of biodiversity and nature.
- The design and development of a ‘bee trail’, with activation at key sites within the Cathays ward and Cardiff city centre.
- Creation of a wellbeing and pollinator garden in the grounds of Cardiff Muslim Primary School on Maindy Road.
- Revitalising three existing timber-built planters on Fanny Street, and installing two new planters on Crwys Road.
- A placemaking project at Cathays Train Station to create a green, open-air ‘waiting room’.
- A pop-up, mobile exhibition (initially at Cardiff University’s Centre for Student Life) showcasing a range of related project assets and outputs.
- Working with community groups, including Keep Cathays Tidy.
- A range of under-pinning community engagement activities focussed on promoting wellbeing, social cohesion and providing opportunities for local residents to connect with nature and each other.
Head of Creative Cardiff, Jess Mahoney, said:
The power of creativity to bring communities together, activate our public spaces and tell new stories runs to the heart of everything that Creative Cardiff is and does. For that reason, we are really excited to be working in partnership with the Pharmabees Project at Cardiff University’s School of Pharmacy to deliver the Greening Cathays commissions. This work builds on Creative Cardiff’s long history of ensuring that the city’s dynamic creative practitioners have the opportunity to get their work ‘seen’ and enjoyed in a variety of contexts and locations. This includes the ‘My Creative Cardiff’ (2020) and ‘Our Creative Place’ (2021) commissions, Creative Cardiff’s 2023 poster campaign and our most recent 12 x commissions to share experiences of grassroots creativity as part of the Creative Industries Cluster Hubs project (2024). I can’t wait to see the impact these new opportunities will have, both in creating vibrant focal points in our local neighbourhoods, and in supporting more biodiversity and insect and plantlife.’
Commission opportunities:
The project team are now seeking to work with local artists, creative practitioners and producers to help realise these outputs. As such, the following seven commissioning opportunities are now live and seeking submissions.
- 'Greening Cathays': Placemaking project on university-owned land at Cathays Train Station (Commission 1)
- ‘Greening Cathays’: Cathays and Cardiff City Centre ‘Bee Trail’ (Commission 2)
- ‘Greening Cathays’: Wellbeing and pollinator garden at Maindy Road (Commission 3)
- ‘Greening Cathays’: Timber planter project (Commission 4)
- ‘Greening Cathays’: Keep Cathays Tidy rubbish and recycling project (Commission 5)
- 'Greening Cathays': Placemaking project at Roy Jenkins University Hall (Commission 6)
- 'Greening Cathays' – Pharmabees pop-up exhibition - creative production commission (Commission 7)
If you have any questions relating to the above commissions, please get in touch with us by emailing creativecardiff@cardiff.ac.uk.
