It's hard to believe that this time last year the world was still oblivious to the ensuing global chaos that the Coronavirus pandemic would cause but it's a new year, a fresh start and things can only get better as we continue to plan for our future. Here's what we got up to behind closed doors in January...

To kick off 2021 we relaunched our community-focussed Voices of Change project. We started this back in May 2020 to encourage more people to get involved in art and create something positive which looks to the future.

We're aiming to reopen with an exciting Voices of Change exhibition featuring everyone's artwork and we'd love for more people to be involved. Find out how you can contribute.

We've been looking for an Exhibition Curator to help us curate and display this exciting community project. Applications have now closed but you can find out more about the role here.

Staying with Voices of Change, local photographer Dee Bryan sent in some beautiful imagery and wrote a blog - 'Solitary' which looks at her own time during lockdown and how she dealt with the feeling of isolation.

We're continuing to showcase artwork from the community in our windows and during January we featured photography from Cardiff’s Black, Asian and ethnically diverse communities. This new project is led by Coleg Gwent and Cardiff Council and there's some fantastic images on display so do take a look if you're passing. Some of it's featured in this blog.

We cenebrated St Dwynwen's Day on 25 January... if you forgot, we hope you're not in too much trouble!

This month we also did a call out for our new Creative Associate roles. These exciting new roles will put artists from across the creative sector at the very heart of what we do. We can’t wait to work in new ways with this first cohort of creative practitioners.

27 January was Holocaust Memorial Day and this year's theme was #LightTheDarkness.  To show our support we illuminated the building in purple.

Edward Lee, Radio Platfform's Outreach and Training Officer, wrote a fantastic blog about our Radio Platfform training, which you can read here.

To sign up to our training course, or for any queries, drop an email to radioplatfform@wmc.org.uk and to listen to what our presenters get up to, check out our live feed and our Mixcloud page.

And to round off the month we launched more pilot workshops for our free Creative Voice courses online. Aimed at anyone aged 14-25 this six-week programme offers young people the platform to explore their interests, express themselves and build creative confidence through practical learning.

There are a few places left so don't delay if you're interested and if you've missed out this time, we'll be doing more of these courses soon.