It's been a strange month. The summer returned along with lockdown measures for much of the country and somewhere in between we managed to support a Butetown Community Carnival Picnic outside. Here's what we've been up to in September...
We started the month by launching some free online training workshops. Creative Voice is a pilot project for young people aged 16-25 with storytelling at its core. We teamed up with Promo Cymru and other trainers to deliver digital workshops in filmmaking, radio production and zine making.
The courses are coming to an end shortly, so we'll update you on how they went but we're planning to develop these workshops further so keep an eye on our socials for updates.
Back in August our youth-led Radio Platfform team ran a free radio production workshop online. One of the participants produced a lovely blog and artwork based on their own radio training notes taken at the time which you can find on Bunny Andrew's blog.
One of our newest Radio Platfform members, Safyan Iqbal posted this great video on Hansh for #InternationalDayOfSignLanguages.
Presenters Luke and Teifi interviewed producer and broadcaster Richard Rees who reflected on his 40 years of broadcasting for BBC Cymru Wales. Listen to the interview on Mixcloud.
The team also chatted on Zoom to radio and TV executive, David Lloyd about working in the industry as one their monthly #RadioTalks.
The team also created an awesome playlist for Butetown Carnival 2020 which you can listen to on Spotify.
We caught up with some of the mentors and mentees taking part in Meet A Mentor: Behind the Lens, a four month mentoring scheme with Create Jobs. So far, we've featured aspiring actor/ director Dylan Matthews and writer, director and film-maker, Prano-Bailey Bond which you can read about in our blog.
We'll also be featuring a piece soon from mentor and 2020 Popcorn Writing Prize winner Jennifer Lunn who picked up the top prize for her new play Es and Flo, which was due to be performed here and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2020.
On 10 September Dante or Die streamed a new immersive video podcast of User Not Found which took place before a live audience in a nearby coffee shop on Bute Street back in 2019. This 50 minute digital experience is now available for the next six months at www.danteordie.com so grab your phone and give it a go!
Our friends at Arup celebrated their 50th year in Wales. Arup played an important role in the construction of this magnificent building - planning supervision, infrastructure, geotechnics, transport and acoustics consultancy which allowed us to listen to simulated performances in the Donald Gordon Theatre during the design phase.
Sadly, we lost one of Cardiff’s true musical legends this month. Patti Flynn was one of the original Bay Divas, a tireless advocate for Black, Asian and ethnically diverse people in Wales and a patron of Black History Month in Wales. She will be greatly missed
On Sunday 20 September after months of planning we finally held a community celebration - fully planned and coordinated during lockdown with our wonderful partners at Butetown Arts and Culture Association and community members interested in making and creating costumes.
It was great day with glorious sunshine and a great atmosphere and we were proud to have been a part of it. You can read all about it in our blog and find more photos on our Facebook page.
Special thanks goes to our partners at Fareshare, Food Cardiff and Good Food Get Togethers who supported us with the planning throughout.
Oti Mabuse tickets went on sale this month. The Strictly Come Dancing and The Greatest Dancer reigning champion will be with us on 6 June 2021 and tickets are available now on our website.
And staying with dance, Rambert produced a unique livestream performance on Friday 25 September. In the spirit of live performance - where anything can happen - Friday night's performance unfortunately had to be postponed due to technical issues but Rambert put on an additional live performance on Saturday evening instead.
And right at the end of the month we proudly published our Welsh Language Standards Report 2019/20 along with this video which we filmed back in 2019 during the Urdd Eisteddfod featuring staff and customers talking about their experiences with us.
Many of the activities we're still able to carry out are a direct result of your kind donations, membership renewals and grant funding. We'd also like to thank the Arts Council of Wales, Moondance Foundation and Garfield Weston, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, The Clive and Sylvia Richards Charity and The Simon Gibson Charitable Trust for allowing us to continue supporting the creative talent, young people and communities that need creativity now, more than ever.