Minister for Culture, Welsh Language and Sport, Alun Pugh today (Monday, 5 April) announced the appointment of nine new members to the Arts Council of Wales (ACW).
Mr Simon Dancey, Ms Rhiannon Wyn Hughes, Mr John Metcalf, Mr Christopher O’Neill, Dr Francesca Rhydderch, Mr Huw Roberts, Professor Dai Smith, Ms Ruth Till and Mr David Vokes officially took up their appointments on 1 April 2004 and will attend their first official Council meeting on 16 April.
Announcing the appointments, Arts Minister Alun Pugh said: "The Arts Council’s job is carry out the Assembly Government’s policy of access and excellence in the arts.
"Arts Council members provide the Assembly Government with expert advice on a range of matters, including how we get the best value for money on our multi-million pound investment in the arts. "
Chair to the Arts Council of Wales since 1 April 2003, Mr Geraint Talfan Davies was closely involved in the appointment of new Members. He said: "The selection process has been a rigorous one. The new members will bring valuable additional expertise to the Council across a wide range of arts
Experience, from the community to the international. It bodes well for the future. I look forward to working with them."
Simon Dancey is currently Director, Community Music Wales and is a leading figure in the community arts field in Wales.
Simon has vast experience in the field of music and events management. He is a performer, composer and producer with a wealth of international experience in countries from Australia to Finland and Israel to USA.
He is a former Marketing Manager to Seren Books and Valleys Arts Marketing.
He is 40 years old and lives in the Vale of Glamorgan
Rhiannon Wyn Hughes is currently lead member for Life Long Learning in Denbighshire County Council and previously lead member for the Culture and Tourism portfolio. She is also Chair of several very active cultural bodies in the North East Wales region including the Bodelwyddan Trust with its links to the National Portrait Gallery, and ECTARC, the European Centre for Training and Regional Culture based in Llangollen.
Rhiannon is also Chair and founding member of the well-established Young Peoples Arts Festival based in Prestatyn, which runs a week long festival each year in co-operation with all the local schools in the area. She is Governor of a range of arts and training bodies including Llandrillo College for Further Education and her local school. She was awarded the MBE in 2001 for services to the Community and Local Government. She is also Welsh Local Government Association representative on ACW’s North Wales Committee. She lives in Meliden, Prestatyn.
Accepting the position, Ms Hughes said: 'I am of course delighted to have been offered an opportunity to share in the work of the Council at what promises to be a very exciting period in its development.
John Metcalf is a leading composer of his generation. He has written six operas, two to commission from Welsh National Opera. His most recent opera received its American premiere in Pittsburgh in January 2004.
He was born in Swansea and currently lives in Lampeter. He has lived and worked in the USA and Canada returning latterly to work as a freelance composer/animateur in Wales. He has a strong commitment to an active participatory role for the artist in society, evidenced by his involvement in workshops in more than 100 schools in Wales. His working life has been characterised by innovation and radical initiatives, for example as the founding Director of a Music Department, a festival and a mixed-programme Arts Centre as well as the leader of a visionary Music Theatre programme in Canada. He is Artistic Director of both the Vale of Glamorgan and Swansea Festivals and has broad experience of a number of art forms including Music, Opera, Dance, Theatre and the Visual Arts'
Accepting the position, Mr Metcalf said: " As someone who has benefited from the infrastructure of support for the arts in Wales in the past, I am happy to have the opportunity to give something back, to assist the investment in the work of artists and to support the work of the Arts Council in all the communities across Wales. The period after the establishment of the National Assembly is an important time for the arts in Wales, allowing a clear opportunity for cultural expression rather than, simply, material consumption or other more short term concerns to help define who we are."
Christopher O'Neil is currently Head of the School of Art and Design, UWIC. Chris completed the Cardiff School of Art & Designs Foundation course before progressing and graduating from Wimbledon School of Art and the Royal College of Art as a sculptor. He is a Trustee of CBAT.
He lived and worked as an artist and educator in England and the USA before returning to Wales. He has exhibited and published internationally.
He lives in Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan.
Francesca Rhydderch was born in New Quay, Ceredigion, and brought up in Llanelli. Francesca graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge in 1991 with a BA Joint Honours Degree in Modern and Medieval Languages. She was awarded an MA with Distinction in Women’s Writing and Feminist Theory from the University of Wales (Trinity College) before completing her doctoral thesis at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. She was appointed Editorial Assistant of the cultural magazine Planet: The Welsh Internationalist in 1998 and subsequently became one of the magazine’s Associate Editors.
In 2000 she took up a new post as Editor for Wales’s largest publishing house, Gomer Press, with responsibility for the development of the press’s English-language titles for adults. In 2002, she was appointed Editor of the literary quarterly, New Welsh Review, and following a redesign and relaunch of the magazine has spent the last two years re-invigorating the literary scene in Wales. Under her editorship, New Welsh Review has deliberately broadened its approach to literary and critical publishing in order to make it more accessible to a greater range of readers in Wales and beyond. The magazine is also developing a contemporary, multicultural identity, which reflects the cultural and literary concerns of post-devolution Wales.
Personal literary projects since 2002 have included the commissioning and editing of a collection of autobiographical writing about Cardiff, by writers as diverse as Dannie Abse, Gwyneth Lewis, Peter Finch and Leonora Brito (Cardiff Central: Ten Writers Return to the Welsh Capital, Gomer, 2003).
Francesca is 35, and lives in Aberystwyth.
Accepting the position, Dr Rhydderch said: "I am delighted to have been appointed to this important and exciting position, and am very much looking forward to making what I hope will be a strong and vital contribution to the arts in Wales over the next three years."
Huw Roberts has been Head of Marketing and Communications and a member of the Management Board of BBC Wales since September 2002. In September 2003 he took on the added responsibility of Public Policy.
Huw has wide experience in marketing, politics and public affairs. Before joining the BBC, he was Managing Director of Strategy Wales, Cardiff’s leading political consultancy, and provided corporate counselling for many public and private sector clients in Wales as well as elsewhere in the UK, among them Glas Cymru, Microsoft, Ufi, the Wales Tourist Board, the WDA and Serco Rail.
Formerly senior special advisor to Ron Davies when he was Secretary of State for Wales, he advised on policy developments and on presentation of Welsh Office matters across the full range of government activities. As such, he was responsible for maintaining and building links with business and industry in Wales.
At one time Director of Public Affairs at SWALEC, he gained valuable experience of the broadcasting industry when earlier he was ITN’s Head of Media Relations. Huw’s early career was as a government information officer in Cardiff and London after studying architecture and design at Kingston School of Art.
Originally from Abercynon in the Cynon Valley, he is married with three grown-up children and now lives near Dinas Powys in the Vale of Glamorgan.
Accepting the position, Mr Roberts said: "What a great time to be joining the Arts Council, with the Millennium Centre about to go live, and a real commitment to supporting the Arts across Wales. I'm looking forward to playing my part in feeding Wales's cultural roots. Most of all, I want to enjoy the fruits those roots will bear."
Professor Dai Smith is currently Pro Vice Chancellor, University of Glamorgan and a distinguished historian and writer on Welsh arts and culture. Daii was born in the Rhondda in 1945 and educated at Porth County and Barry Grammar School. He read History and Literature at Balliol College, Oxford; Columbia University, New York; and University of Wales, Swansea. From 1969 to 1993 he taught History at the universities of Lancaster, Swansea and Cardiff. In 1986 he was awarded a Personal Chair by the University of Wales.
In 1993 he joined the BBC as Editor of Radio Wales and from 1994 to 2000 was Head of Broadcast (English Language) at BBC Wales where he commissioned a number of notable and award-winning programmes, especially in the Arts and in Drama.
Professor Smith is a renowned historian and prolific writer; is well known as a broadcaster on radio and television and is always in popular demand as a speaker on a wide range of topics. He is also an expert on the history of the sports of rugby and boxing, and is an avid supporter of both.
Professor Dai Smith joined the University of Glamorgan as Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and Regeneration) in February 2001. In this capacity, he has particular responsibility for initiatives relating to the social economic and cultural contribution which the University makes within the community.
He now lives in Barry Island, Vale of Glamorgan
Ruth Till is currently Director of Rubicon Dance. She is an acknowledged authority in dance and community arts and is one of the best known figures in the field in Wales.
Ruth initially trained and performed as a dancer before becoming dance lecturer on a theatre and community arts programme at Rotherham College of Arts and Technology, South Yorkshire, leading a full-time dance course as well as a community dance programme.
Then Director of Yorkshire Dance Centre Leeds, which in addition to programming involved an ongoing conversion of the centre from a disused four storey wharehouse to a dance centre, to house a dance company (Phoenix) and a community dance programme.
Moved to Wales in 1993 to take up post of Director of Rubicon Dance. Rubicon is the community dance development organisation for Cardiff and Newport. Priorities at Rubicon are, to address access to dance with consistent high quality provision, creating opportunities for young people to achieve in and through dance and providing relevant training for those who want to become community dance practitioners.
International work while in Wales includes: two visits to Australia as guest of Ausdance; one to Sweden as guest of Danstationen, Malmo; two to Utah as guest of Utah Arts Council, all to promote community dance the Rubicon, Wales way; youth dance exchanges with groups in Berlin, Craiova, Romania; Children’s Dance Theatre Salt Lake City and with young Native Americans from Monument Valley both in Utah; a youth performance project in Copenhagan as part of Artisan a European funded programme led by WJEC.
She has been involved since 1997 on a long-term project in Craiova Romania with a fellow dance leader from Rubicon working with deaf and disabled children in residential schools and orphanages in Craiova, Romania.
Accepting the position from her home in Cardiff, Ms Till said: "I am delighted to be appointed to the Arts Council at this exciting time for the arts in Wales."
David Vokes is a Solicitor and Commercial Lawyer by training. He was Managing Partner of Eversheds Cardiff for more than 10 years. He is a former board member of Chapter Arts, former council mender of Arts & Business, and Director of St David’s Hall and the New Theatre Trust.
David is married with 3 Grown up children. He was born in and has lived in Cardiff all his working life.
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