We are all observers and participants in our changing world. As we continue to live life in ‘hard mode’ (thank you James), with what we once deemed essential now feeling distant and perhaps even superfluous, it is important to remind ourselves about what makes us human. This Creative Cardiff commission (working in partnership with Arts Council of Wales) does just this. It invites us to embrace the importance of imagination, creativity, and geography in defining us. It reminds us how each of these characteristics are powerful things on their own, but when they work together, they can transform.
As I observed and participated in the artist workshops that supported this commission, I sensed this transformation in action. Quite serendipitously, before the first workshop I had spent some time looking at a paper focused on residents in New York City who gathered to talk about the role of the Hudson River in their lives. As they spoke, in a dry, cold library in (pre-pandemic) NYC, the organisers suggested that participants might choose a word or two which evoked their experience and invited them to write it on a blue ribbon. The ribbon was unspooled from story to story, held, passed, and shared, gathering words and lives, and running like the Hudson itself through the city library. As I dialled in to the Creative Place workshop, it was if a similar process was occurring. From ‘box’ to ‘box’ on my laptop screen, from place to place, and from person to person, an idea, a spark, an ignition, as each artist’s tale of creativity, itself moulded from their ‘imprint’ in their locality, fizzed as it came into being. I could sense each box buzzing as it became part of this circuit of connected and collective creativity.
As artists shared their ideas, and were encouraged to attend to the sounds, words, and images which might push the boundaries of digital media, it was clear to me how we, as the audience, were also central to this circuit. Although traditionally it may seem that art is complete when the paintbrush is laid down for the last time, the concluding edge polished, and the final cut made, this commission considered that end-point to be merely provisional. The artists’ stories did, each in their own way, celebrate us. A Creative Place invites us, you and I, along with that guy in the Mobile Tourist Information Centre over there (thank you Justin), to engage – and if we do so, we can become part of this circuit too.
Through their combination of imagination, creativity, and geography these works story us into the lives of others (and story others into our lives too). They remind us of the diversity that constitutes our communities, the different ages, genders, the various pasts and presents, all with a range of values and ideals which compose our region. As we attend to how our lives are ‘entwined and tethered’ (thank you Gwellian) we can remind ourselves of the importance of direct familial connections (thank you Lucy, James), the legacies of those no longer with us, and ensure that we can ‘hold space for’ their stories in order to enrich our futures (thank you Reg). These works are honest enough to admit that being open to creativity can be risky. As we trip through our imagination, we may fall, but although we may create suspicion, it is ultimately rewarding (thank you Erin). It can help us face our demons, reconcile ourselves with our individual and collective pasts, and help us to find solace in myths which place us within the wider world. These works remind us that imagination, creativity, and geography help us regenerate our empathy for the differences in the lives of others, and feel a sense of genuine pride for the ways they combine to forge our region.
To me, then, this commission is significant. It reminds us that in our changing lives, when we feel alone, all we need to do is reach out. Art, creativity, people, and place are verbs which can help us; they can ‘see us through’ (thank you Rufus); it works for these artists, as products and producers of their communities, and it can work for us as their audience too. So reach out, connect, ‘melt’, ‘splash’, and ‘feel the ripples’ that join us together (thank you Carys and Claire). In a world where nothing may ‘quite satisfy or excite’ us in ways we may wish for (thank you Reg), through reaching out into a creative place we can find our own ‘lost letters’, histories, and elements, and form ‘words’ which can define us afresh (thank you Gwenllian). These works, re-made as we embrace them, can continue to provide us all with ‘a warm cwtch of happiness’ (thank you Naz); so click back and become part of it.
Postscript.
As the workshops concluded, we were lightheartedly asked to ‘define ourselves in a sentence’. In that spirit, these works? they work. They are all in their own way a map to our region, a map which locates our collectivity and our inclusivity, a map which can make us, if not always happy, then always human.
