Community Dance Wales

Community Dance Wales sets the standards for community dance practice in Wales, supporting innovation and inspiration through reflective practice. 

The community dance movement in Wales has a history spanning more than a quarter of a century. In 1989, a group of dance animateurs from across Wales, having identified the need for a networking, information and support system, established a voluntary network called Community Dance Wales.

Ten years later the organisation was constituted and the following year achieved Company and Charity status along with revenue funding from Arts Council of Wales. The gradual and thoughtful evolution of the art form, body of practice and its considered and careful approach has meant that a strong national community dance infrastructure and framework has developed.

Community Music Wales
Community Music Wales‘s fundamental aim is to contribute to the empowerment of disadvantaged groups and individuals through enabling them to participate in creativity and learning through music making. CMW works across Wales in a variety of dynamic ways, we engage with a cross section of the community from small local groups, organisations and charities, local authorities and the Welsh Assembly Government. We provide specialized activities including participatory workshops, taster sessions, DJing and music technology, drumming and percussion sessions, multi arts workshops, music industry mentoring, professional development and training. In the past we have supported the early careers of many young Welsh musicians who have gone on to great success, bands such as the Lost Prophets and Bullet for my Valentine. CMW through its Welsh Language initiative “Ciwdod” has also launched the success of many Welsh Language artists and supported the rich and diverse heritage of Welsh Music. 

Head for Arts

Head for Arts stimulates creativity in communities across the Heads of the Valleys area by providing high quality grassroots arts activities and inspirational arts experiences.

Head for Arts is a local authority partnership initiative delivering community arts across the Eastern Heads of the Valleys areas, covering the county boroughs of Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly, Merthyr Tydfil and Torfaen.  Established in April 2008, Head for Arts aims to increase community participation and address gaps in arts provision. It has an administrative base in Llanhilleth Miners Institute but programmes arts activity in various venues across the entire patch.

National Dance Company Wales

Founded in 1983 (originally as Diversions), National Dance Company Wales performs all over Wales, the UK and internationally in contemporary dance productions performed by nine professional dancers. The Company’s founding philosophy was that dance performance and participation work offers transformational art experiences for all levels of individual. The Company has an extensive annual programme of community, education and professional development projects, working with both young and older people, and from beginner to advanced professional level within the dance sector.

 
Led by Artistic Director, Ann Sholem and based at the Dance House in the Wales Millennium Centre, the Company’s Associate Artist, Roy Campbell-Moore leads on the Company’s participation and outreach strategy and also directs large-scale, youth dance productions on a regular basis.

Professor Hamish Fyfe, University of Glamorgan

Hamish Fyfe has worked as a teacher, actor, and researcher in a variety of contexts. He worked for twenty years in Belfast, Northern Ireland before taking up his post as Chair of Arts in the Community at the University of Glamorgan in September 2004. 

His research interests currently fall into three broad areas;

• Creative community building through cross-sector collaboration with the arts
• What is creativity, how does it ‘work’ and how can it be fostered?
• Theatre, ritual and identity

Hamish worked on a research project for the Welsh Assembly which is concerned with cross-sectoral arts activity throughout Wales. Recommendations from the report are forming an element of the developing cultural policy for Wales. In a recently published book, She Danced and We Danced – Artists, Creativity and Education, Hamish examines the role of artists and other creative professionals in learning and community building in Northern Ireland. He is currently researching for a new publication the working title of which is Making Play Work which is concerned with the developing international debate about creativity and its contribution to social and economic development.

Sherman Cymru

Sherman Cymru is a building based theatre in Cardiff which makes and presents great theatre that is ambitious, inventive and memorable for its audiences, and creates strong, responsive and enriching relationships with its communities.

Streetwise Opera

Streetwise Opera uses music as a tool to help people who have experienced homelessness move forward in their lives. We do this through a weekly music programme in 11 homeless centres around England and by staging professional opera productions.

We produce work of equal artistic and social merit so we can platform the skills of our performers in a mainstream arena that is inclusive but not tokenistic. We stage biennial professional opera productions created by and starring all our performers – underpinning these operas we run safe, open, fun weekly singing sessions which our performers find a dependable source of regular activity in lives where everything else can be changing.

Welsh National Opera

Welsh National Opera is a world-class touring opera company with a permanent company of 250 people. The work of the Chorus, Orchestra, principal singers, music staff and other creative teams is supported by a strong administration. This includes departments specifically specialising in areas including Development, Finance, Marketing, Media, Planning, Technical and WNO MAX.

WNO MAX is a small producing department that produces Welsh National Opera’s participatory, outreach and education projects, connecting company and community.

WNO MAX creates innovative and inclusive work of high quality, which engages communities and individuals with Welsh National Opera, opera and creativity. It delivers memorable and powerful experiences, which impact lives, change perceptions of the company and create a sense of ownership of Welsh National Opera as a whole.