Welsh Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: International Representation and Promotion of Wales by UK bodies, HC 337
Thursday 26 June 2014
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 26 June 2014.
Written evidence from witnesses:
– Institute of Directors Wales (Huw Roberts)
– Wales Literature Exchange (Dr Sioned Puw Rowlands)
– Welsh National Opera (Geraint Talfan Davies)
– Arts Council Wales (Nick Capaldi)
– Amgueddfa Cymru (David Anderson)
Members present: David T. C. Davies (Chair); Guto Bebb: Glyn Davies; Stephen Doughty, Jonathan Edwards; Nia Griffith; Jessica Morden;
Questions 161-227
Witnesses: Michael Carrick, Chief Executive, Aventa Capital Partners Ltd., and Huw Roberts, Chair, Institute of Director Wales, gave evidence.
Chair: Good morning Mr Roberts and Mr Carrick. Thank you very much indeed for coming.
Q161 Jessica Morden: The Government have said that inward investment has increased or improved over the past couple of years. Do you agree? If so, how significant and stable do you think that improvement might be?
Huw Roberts: There is no question but that it has increased because inward investment is absolutely associated with the world cycle so, certainly, it has increased. Inward investment remains crucially important to Wales. Part of the problem is that there is a false debate going on about whether we should be worrying about inward or indigenous investment. I do not think it is an either/or. The things that make a country successful make them successful for people from China, America, south-east England and from Wales, so it is hugely important. If you cannot make yourselves appealing to peripatetic projects, you are not going to be so appealing to indigenous projects either, so investment is important. Inevitably, you will get an increase in investment as the world economy turns up but the real question is: what proportion is Wales getting? I think that some of the figures being bandied about are fairly selective. Yes, the figures are going up in Wales but as a proportion of the UK, they remain at historic lows.
Q162 Chair: Sorry—I didn’t quite catch that because of the bell ringing.
Huw Roberts: In percentage terms—in our evidence we have a graph that shows that the figures for investment in Wales remain at a low proportion compared with the rest the UK. That would be the main worry for our membership.
Q163 Jessica Morden: What strategy do you think Wales should be adopting to make it an attractive place to invest in?
Huw Roberts: It is the same strategy that we hear all the time. We need to ensure that the quality of education matches other comparable parts and other potential sources. We need to ensure that our infrastructure is good. We need to inject greater appreciation of business requirements into the organs of government—Welsh Government and local authorities. Those things are necessary and, as you are discussing in this inquiry, the way we make campaigns and seek information on what is available and apply our resources accordingly is also important. You need the tools in government in the broader sense; I am not just discussing the Welsh Government, although it is at the centre. In the UK and at the local authority level you need them all to understand what makes businesses want to come to an area and offer a reasonably appropriate package for that.
Michael Carrick: I have a slightly more focused view, given that my background is purely infrastructure and regeneration. What we see in Wales is really a lack of opportunity for investment relative to other opportunities in Scotland and the rest of the UK. When we look at how to bring inward investment into Wales through managed capital, through institutional investors under some form of external managers, they tend to want to look at fixture lists of investable projects. I’m afraid that, relative to other parts of the UK and certainly areas where investors can look in terms of Europe, we do not really have a very strong pipeline of opportunity for investment.
Secondly, in Wales we have not had a history of encouraging institutional-managed capital in any of the major infrastructure projects that we have got. We tended to use the balance sheet of Government, whether it be Welsh Government or national Government, to deliver those programmes of investment. I think that is changing, but the levels of education, knowledge and awareness of how to do these transactions are quite low. I certainly agree with Huw about the awareness of councils and of departments in Wales about what is necessary to attract, retain and encourage private investment, managed-capital investment and institutional capital of scale, which includes the sovereign wealth and others. You need to do an awful lot more to encourage that—scaleable projects, deliverable projects, support packages that are available that other parts of the UK are delivering and an awareness of the opportunities that Wales can deliver. I think that is pretty significant.
Q164 Chair: I spoke to a company once that was looking to make a big inward investment into either Wales or Northern Ireland. They told me that they had gone to Northern Ireland because by the time somebody had answered their calls from the IBW, they had already been flown over to Northern Ireland by the equivalent investment body, shown premises and given a deal that they could sign up to. They said the process was very much quicker elsewhere than it was in Wales. Is that anecdote something you would recognise, or do you think that it was perhaps a one-off and would not be repeated?
Huw Roberts: It is very hard to generalise from one anecdote, but it is a story that our members would recognise. It is quite challenging to find a direction through Welsh Government. The problem is, you finish up with the elephant in the room: how do you ensure that people have a route—you need a structured route—that allows them to get to all the various resources that are available? It wasn’t how we were; we were very able deliver packages. In our evidence, we referred in passing to the derelict land unit, which I considered to be a star in the firmament, but internally it did not have great credibility. They were taking away tips, but that enabled them to offer land, ready serviced, with good packages with the local authorities—local authorities are very important in this and that is not discussed enough—and that meant that people could come in and see a package very quickly. But you need someone who is charged with that task. If they are not charged with it, you will quickly sink into a morass.
Many of our members would recognise that anecdote, but we would need to look at just how many times that has happened. I sat in on the session with the Celtic Manor representative and you will remember that their great skill is to have a package all ready. If you are a customer, that is another problem off your plate and that does make you more attractive.
Michael Carrick: It is something I recognise. I have heard it many times and we have experienced it. It’s getting better, it’s hot and cold—it depends on the officers you get in the department. At the political level, it is very clear that there is a willingness and wish for Wales to be more effective and efficient, track the gap and make quick decisions in recognising that other parts of the UK can respond and are able to offer similar type packages.
We have had good experiences and we have had not so good experiences. I don’t think it is down to the policy, I think it is down to the implementation and effectiveness of certain officers. You know that if you get a particular individual it will go faster and if you get another one it won’t. I know this is going to sound odd, but I have been asked by Welsh Government a number of times to make contact with companies to say, “We’ll get there, just bear with us, because you’ve gone through this process, you’ve experienced it, you know what we have to do.” We’re very diligent and robust and that is right, but they do take a little bit longer than those in other parts of the country.
We are doing projects in Wales, Ireland, Scotland and East Anglia, all of which touch Government in some way and have similar type grant packages or support packages that we are seeking. We experience different levels of responsiveness. I would not say that Wales is slower or faster than other ones; I think it is down to specific capabilities. Unfortunately, I think some of those individuals are stretched because they are go-to experts and they have a lot of opportunities. The changes that have been made in Industry Wales and Finance Wales and others are positive in that direction, but the rest of the world is moving fast as well.
Q165 Nia Griffith: I just wanted to pick up a point that Huw Roberts made about the importance of local authorities. What is you assessment? Is there a lack of expertise in local authorities? Are some less able or some perhaps too small to be able to interact effectively? What are the issues that you have uncovered?
Huw Roberts: The last time that the IOD spoke to this Committee we were looking at Silk. Some members may remember that the IOD position surprises some people. We look for an increase in the number of Assembly Members because we do not think there are enough of them to do appropriate scrutiny, but we saw that as counterweighed by a significant reduction in the number of local authorities.
Looking at the size of Wales and 21st-century management style, we are convinced that five would be the right number. They would then be able to be constructed in a way that reflected the topography, the culture and the economic requirements of Wales. With five authorities you could have five top-class sections looking at economic development. To have 22 scattered across Wales, with 22 bosses, deputies and all the rest of it, in no one place will there be enough strength or effectiveness. It is yet another area where the ridiculous number of local authorities in Wales is damaging.
I did briefly work in the WDA. I like to point out that it was at the highest point in terms of numbers. Tragically it was a pure coincidence that I was there at that time, but I was there then. Being a bit of a natural statist and control freak I would like us to have been in charge of all that we were doing in the WDA.
I was very lucky to work for a really effective chief executive called David Waterstone. David always fully understood that you were going to get nowhere without local authorities. Through my whole time there we worked incredibly closely with them. The famous branding was shared with local authorities, and we would ensure they knew if we had potential projects or sites. It was slightly different times, and might have been ridiculous but it was a different time. There was a lot of appetite to come out of the south-east, which was where most of Welsh inward investment came, not international.
We would be able to talk to local authorities to look at something like the Rassau estate. They would have everything done for and with that local authority in WDA packaging, so that when the client came there, they felt that Team Wales really existed. We did not use the phrase then but it was there.
Chair: I am slightly conscious of questions. Did you have a follow-up on that?
Nia Griffith: Yes. Could I go on?
Huw Roberts: I will try to be shorter. I’m sorry.
Q166 Chair: May I just pick up on one thing you said? I could not just let the point about extra Assembly Members go. I wonder whether that is a view shared by your members. I think I was one at some time during the 1990s and my impression is that most of the business members of the IOD would be reluctant to see extra Welsh Assembly Members. I did not notice that the politicians in general of any party had a great big fan club among the small businesses that I used to interact with.
Huw Roberts: You are absolutely right to ask that question, of course. As you know, the IOD’s position is that we want to see the tax burden lower; we want to see people understand that wealth creators, whether in the public or private sector, should be allowed to create that wealth. That position has been accepted at UK level by the IOD. What we are looking at in Wales is, as I said at the beginning, unusual. What we have been seeking to do is look at a solution that is more realistic in this day and age.
We are not arguing for more elected Members; we are arguing for better ones in the right place. These are not figures that we have discussed but the two numbers that have been talked about are 80-odd or 100. Either of those numbers would carry a significant increase in the cost for the Assembly. We would argue for that, but we would argue strongly against it if you were still left with 22 local authorities in Wales.
Q167 Chair: And IOD Wales is perfectly happy with the IOD UK position of the state spending less money than it does at the moment.
Huw Roberts: To be absolutely clear, the position is that if the state was to spend less money this time, you would have sufficient resource to have a better, more efficient public sector. But in Wales, as you would imagine, many of our members are in the public sector. We see it as a key part of our function to improve both the governance and effectiveness of their direction. That is something we talk to the Welsh Government about quite a lot and it is very strong for us. Our model is one that suits Wales. You cannot have an IOD position for the south-east of England that is comparable to the position for Wales. You have to recognise the political realities, but you are quite right; there are many areas where our membership would say, “Bring back the WDA tomorrow.” I recall that while it was there, our membership was not quite so enthusiastic about it, so we have to have a balance.
Chair: I won’t be able to get you on that one, I think.
Q168 Nia Griffith: The UKTI has come in for quite some criticism in the way that it perhaps does not promote Wales as it should. What are your views on UKTI and how it does or does not promote Wales?
Michael Carrick: I declare a very direct connection with UKTI through two institutions they run: one is the Regeneration Investment Organisation and the other is the Automotive Investment Organisation. It is fair to say that the Welsh projects—there are two—are heavily promoted internationally by both RIO and the Automotive Investment Organisation. Both organisations are mandated to bring investment into the UK. They are very clear that it does not matter to them whether that is in the south-east of England, Shetland, Northern Ireland or Wales. They want good, structured, robust, investable opportunities to attract international investment. We have had nothing but the strongest support from both RIO and the Automotive Investment Organisation. One of the director generals, James Price, sits on the board of RIO and is profiling the Welsh projects. They have deliberately gone out of their way to involve Wales and when we deal with them internationally, we get significantly greater support in places such as China and the middle east through their offices. By their embassies, by the British Council and by their offices on the ground, they are very effective at attracting the right type of companies for us to talk to about investment in Wales.
Q169 Nia Griffith: Mr Roberts, do you have any different views on that?
Huw Roberts: It is not that it is different; it is a question of time scales. Certainly on the longest, first period after devolution, we used the word “dismal” in our evidence. It is not widely understood that, at the time of devolution, there was a Cabinet Committee I used to attend which looked at how each and every area of activity should be divided. Naturally, when you make a Barnett division of costs, Wales will clearly suffer because you have the opposite direction of economies of scale. You have to do things in Wales that were previously done in the UK. Rather than find resource and transfer it, the decision was made that in numerous, arguably technical areas, Whitehall Departments—although responsible only for England—would continue to do some activities, typically animal health research for example. One area we were always concerned about was overseas promotion of inward investment. It is the view of our members that, certainly for the first part and for most of the time since devolution, what has happened is that as soon as the door shut behind devolution and the Welsh Government was in place, Whitehall Departments instinctively reverted to their English activity. Our view is that we did not get enough help in those early days.
We are absolutely delighted with what Michael confirms, that this is improving. At the first meeting of the Economic Regeneration Committee I attended, Lord Green addressed us and the offer, which we were not going to be ungrateful about—you must not look a gift horse in the mouth—was to send an official to Wales on secondment for DTI to work more closely with Welsh Government officials. My thought was that they were meant to have done that 14 years ago. What had they been doing in between? I am not absolutely sure whether that appointment has yet been filled. You may know.
Michael Carrick: No, I do not, and I would agree with you that there are certain portfolio Departments that simply do not have Wales on the map. I would include Treasury and others. We have spent years trying to get Westminster’s support. It is only those two specific organisations that have actually delivered.
Q170 Nia Griffith: Is the relationship with Welsh Government and UKTI now as it should be?
Huw Roberts: There is plenty of room for improvement—a great deal of room for improvement.
Michael Carrick: Yes, there is.
Q171 Nia Griffith: Do you think that the problem has been that we have been asking for things for Wales? What if we changed the tone and said that London and the south-east were becoming unsustainable, that we could not have a situation where 40% of foreign direct investment continued to focus on that one area and that it would be beneficial for all areas of the UK if there were a move away from so much coming to London? Do you think there has been too much, “We want this in Wales,” rather than saying, “You will benefit as well if we can move investment out”?
Michael Carrick: I think that is the focus of the Regeneration Investment Organisation. They recognise that there is a strong financial community in London that supports services in the rest of the UK, but the reality is that regional regeneration is their push. I do not think the lack of focus on Wales, Edinburgh or elsewhere is the problem; I think the problem is that we do not have enough scaleable, investable opportunities in Wales. What RIO is doing is looking for projects of £1 billion, £2 billion, £5 billion, £10 billion, £30 billion type projects that appeal to the types and volumes of capital that want to come to the UK.
So when you are talking about high speed lines, nuclear power stations or new infrastructure that we want to be financed by the sovereign funds overseas, we simply do not have that scale of investment opportunities in Wales, other than one or two big projects. I think that the challenge for Wales is that you have got a lot of investment needs, but they tend to be on a scale that is slightly smaller than where some of the investors want to deploy capital. Therefore you need to find different mechanisms of intervention to attract that capital.
Chair: If I may say, this is very interesting evidence, but I am getting a little bit worried about the time. We are still on our second question. I might have to crack the whip a little bit with everyone here.
Q172 Jonathan Edwards: On the back of the last question that Nia asked, do you think that the UKTI should follow the Germany Trade and Invest, which has a mission statement to move investment into the poorest parts of the state?
Michael Carrick: The short answer is I don’t think so. I don’t think you can encourage investors and say, “We want you to put housing development there,” if it does not make economic and financially viable sense. I think you need to make attractive investment places and you are not going get capital to go where it does not want to go.
Huw Roberts: The IOD would strongly agree with that; you need to make the whole place attractive, which means the infrastructure plus the opportunities—that is the answer.
Q173 Guto Bebb: In view of the evidence from the IOD, I think you are slightly guilty of trying to have your cake and eat it. You say quite clearly that the merger of the WDA and the Welsh Tourist Board into the Welsh Government has not worked, but you are also saying that the WDA was far from perfect. Now, in my own experience, the WDA was far from perfect, but I think the reaction of most people was, “Come back, all is forgiven.” In terms of what you are now proposing, which is an arm’s length body to promote Wales, how would that differ from the WDA? What would be required to make that arm’s length body a success?
Huw Roberts: We seek to demonstrate that, as I said in my evidence earlier, what people would have said about the WDA when it was there is different from what they say now it has departed. There can be various sorts of arm’s length body. I found it rather surprising to see the WDA being characterised as promoting a low wage economy. In my brief time there, that was simply not true. It was low unit costs, which is a world apart from low-wage. Low unit costs in many ways were because of very cheap land and buildings ready and so on.
The WDA did suit some of its work quite well, but when we talk about it having passed its sell-by date, we think that the direction it was under towards the end was not appropriate. There was a lack of understanding of the function of a public body and its relationship with elected members, so you are inevitably going arrive in a difficult position. What we are talking about now—it is different—is an institution that looks much more broadly. Mr Davies may remember that the DBRW used frequently to spend money on advertising campaigns which were running counter to WDA advertising campaigns. We have had things like the Wales Tourist Board proudly telling the world you cannot get a mobile signal in Wales. These quite different views are difficult things for people outside to understand. Our argument is that, if you had an institution in the public sector—quangos are public sector—and they actually had responsibility to ensure that the various elements did not clash, and you do not seek to make them completely integrated, that would be very helpful.
Q174 Guto Bebb: Just to be specific on the point you made about the WDA not being able to interact with the elected Members, how do you envisage this new arm’s length body interacting with the elected members in the Assembly? My own experience, before I was elected, is that the bureaucracy of the Welsh Government was not able to take what I would call entrepreneurial decisions, because of the blame culture that exists within any Government bureaucracy. How would you get that arm’s length body in place while also allowing democratic accountability? What would you be looking for?
Huw Roberts: It has worked in many other areas. It is worth bearing in mind, interestingly, all the areas of activity that the Welsh Government think are important. For the Welsh language, they have a commissioner; for children’s issues, they have a commissioner; and for old people’s issues—I am delighted they have a commissioner looking after me there. There are a great many of them.
Guto Bebb: The Welsh language commissioner does not seem to be working very well, with respect.
Huw Roberts: Indeed. Perhaps that makes my point to an extent. You have Natural Resources Wales, which did a very good presentation only a week or so ago. Each of those, clearly, is able to report in to Ministers. You have letters of intent at the beginning of the year. The Arts Council of Wales, which they once sought to see the back of, works to its letters. It knows exactly what the politicians want and it gets on with the job that the politicians have told it to do. There should, as with any corporate body, be regular reporting by the chief executive to the appropriate officials and, where necessary, Ministers.
Q175 Guto Bebb: Just a final question. I think Mr Carrick and Mr Roberts highlighted the fact that when the Welsh Assembly was established, there was almost a withdrawal from Wales by some institutions in Westminster that possibly could have been doing a lot to support the new institutions of the Welsh Government. Do you think there is the expertise and the knowledge required for such a successful arm’s length body to be established currently within the Welsh Government structures? I cannot envisage the individuals who are currently employed within the Welsh Government on economic development necessarily not being offered an opportunity to work for this new arm’s length body.
Huw Roberts: It is a mistake to assume that officials are not capable of doing the job. An official’s job is to ensure that the Minister achieves a Minister’s policies. That is what officials are for. To do that job they have to be close to the Minister, cover the Minister’s back and ensure that the Minister’s decisions do not have unforeseen issues. That is effective and very good civil service activity. If, though, you are in an arm’s length body—a trading arm or whatever you decide to put in place—and your responsibility is to hit the numbers the Minister gave you at the beginning of the year, you are able to do it.
I also worked for probably the most secretive promotional body in Britain, which was the Offshore Supplies Office. Scotland had a massively funded offshore supplies office run by the Department of Energy whose objective was to ensure that British industry got the maximum out of the North sea. It was run entirely by civil servants. John d’Ancona—father of Matthew d’Ancona—was the very successful director general there, and to this day Britain gets the benefit of cutting edge skills in offshore technology. All were civil servants. They were not short of enterprise or initiative. They had a function in which they were not meant to be enterprising and using initiative. It is like demanding that a taxi driver drives like Lewis Hamilton—you do not want him to. I think it is a mistake to assume that civil servants are not capable of doing it; it is that they are not there to do it.
Michael Carrick: I agree. On the challenges we face in our project, we are asking the Government to do things that they are not geared up to do: take risks, share risks, and process things that we need done, which we can get done in other parts of the country, but are proving difficult to deliver through the frameworks that they have in Wales.
Chair: Glyn, do you want to come in on this?
Glyn Davies: I think we have pretty well covered it. I would only be tempted to go down the nostalgic route.
Q176 Jonathan Edwards: We have heard evidence that published data on inward investment is of a poor quality. What improvements would you like to see to the published data that are available?
Huw Roberts: Our members have not referred to that, particularly. It is not an area that we put a lot of energy into. We would expect and want all data to be as accurate as practicable. If it is not, we think that ought to be looked at. If there are issues about its quality, then surely, with there being a national statistics body now with a degree of independence, they should be asked to look at it.
Michael Carrick: No, it doesn’t affect our business at all. We look at the general macroeconomic trends. We don’t use it for our investment decisions.
Q177 Chair: In that case, perhaps I could ask Mr Carrick first. You will be aware that the Welsh Assembly has a network of 13 overseas offices that some wanted to term “Welsh embassies”. How effective do you think these have been in promoting Welsh interests?
Michael Carrick: We have very limited experience. We have been on two trips with Welsh Government officials to China. One of our directors has been on a further trip as well. I think the experience is different.
Certainly from our experience of going overseas to China, I think we got more out of the meeting through DTI than we did out of the Welsh Government. But I think that was because, effectively, the Welsh Government has focused on Chongqing as its base in China. I think we were going through a transitional phase when we were there, with new staff coming in. Quite frankly, I don’t think it was worth our time going. I think we were educating the companies we saw about Wales more than the officials were. I think there was an element of difficulty for us in finding value out of that trip.
Having said that, one of my managing directors who is in IT went on a very different trip and ended up signing an MOU with a Chinese search company, all introduced by the Welsh officials. That was very effective.
For the types of industries or growth strategies that Wales wants to pursue, particularly on the IT side, it was an effective trip. For us, it wasn’t. The three things that I was particularly frustrated about were: the companies that we saw knew nothing about us or about Wales; that we went with officials who did not speak Chinese; and that they spent most of the meetings talking about what they were looking to do in Wales and how Wales might help them, rather than any alignment to what we were there to discuss. We had an entirely different experience when we were there in Beijing with the DTI, which had some focused meetings specifically about us and about a specific opportunity. We didn’t need to introduce where it was, how it was or what we were doing. All those were conducted either in English or in Chinese, but the representatives were clearly fluent in both.
I would hope that my experience on that particular trip wasn’t reflective.
Huw Roberts: I would not really want to add to that. That is an indication of the point we were making: that you have people who are not appropriately directed in the task at hand.
Clearly, I am involved in fairly modest cultural activities as well. We have found the activity with the New York office quite helpful, but there are times when you wonder about the amount of work being done. The Welsh Minister turned up in New York to promote Wales on 17 March—there are better days on which to do that, like 16 days before; turning up on St Patrick’s day is not a great idea.
So you do see this weakness, but this comes back to our point: you are asking officials to do a task for which they are not particularly suited and not appropriately directed.
Q178 Nia Griffith: Moving on from that, the Secretary of State for Wales has also been abroad promoting Wales, including to Japan and Malaysia. What assessment do you make of his visits? Has anything materialised from them?
Michael Carrick: Not that we can see. I think there is a disconnect.
Huw Roberts: The same overarching issue is: do his people have a clear direction? Do they have a set of objectives? If they do, then each and every attempt to increase its visibility is better. So if you are in a country like China, clearly there is a signal if your Secretary of State goes with you. It is very helpful. But it is of no use whatsoever unless you plan around it.
When we used to do offshore conferences for OSO in the States, we would always make sure the Minister came. But it was simply part of making an event worth other people attending. But it has to be planned in.
Q179 Nia Griffith: So would you think that there were grounds for organising anything jointly between the Welsh Government and the Secretary of State for Wales?
Huw Roberts: Mr Davies is pressing me to put my own membership’s views. They would probably be delighted if both were out of the country together, but that is not quite what you are asking, I think.
I would have thought, if I was an official in that sort of job, that I would not want to be wasting their time doing the two of them together. You would have an event and say, “This is the man who runs Wales from London, and this is the man who runs Wales from Cardiff.” You would say that to the people there. You wouldn’t particularly want them both, but they should unquestionably be linked. Neither of them should do one without it falling clearly into a programme that they agreed at the beginning of the year.
Q180 Nia Griffith: How would you measure the effectiveness of those types of visits and what would be the most important criteria for you?
Huw Roberts: There are components of the visit. You would measure the effectiveness of the whole visit and identify whether you had a better set of guests as a consequence of one of them being there. You would ask how many people you got at your reception, when there were eight other receptions going on at the same time. It is simple, but it is a start, and you then begin to understand whether you have enough contacts. The next step after making contacts is: how many are conversions? That’s a matter for how people work after that. Michael made a point about having projects to sell and people to respond quickly. Contacts, conversions and then conclusions—these are what you need.
Michael Carrick: It is also cultural. If you were going to emerging markets and developing nations and looking at pools of Asian capital, you need very clear Government support mechanisms. It is less important if you are in the US or other parts of Europe, where there are more established institutional frameworks for looking at the opportunities and the people delivering them. It isn’t like that in some of our markets; it is Government-to-Government action.
Chair: Do you have a last question?
Glyn Davies: Before we move away from this section, I wanted to come back on it.
Chair: There is no further section; we’re well ahead of ourselves.
Q181 Glyn Davies: The only question I wanted to ask is this. I have been involved in this for more than 30 years. It used to be thought hugely important that we have an effective presence in Brussels, not just to understand and influence Brussels, but as an overseas office. When you look at the list of overseas offices, Brussels isn’t in there. How important is that presence in Brussels and is it effective in promoting Wales?
Michael Carrick: We are using UKTI in Brussels, which promotes our project in Brussels, Italy, France and other places. They came to us, knowing about the scale of the opportunity and what they saw as the potential interest of the people they deal with. We hadn’t actually thought about Brussels until they approached us. From an institutional perspective, looking at investing capital, the role of the European Development Bank, the European Investment Bank and the ERDF funding structures, having a clear route into European funding and directing European funding would be helpful. Across the UK, we tend to keep grant applications almost below threshold levels, because we know that once they get into Brussels, they take for ever to deliver. As a private investor, we try to minimise that level of engagement.
Chair: We managed to get ahead of ourselves and finish on time. I thank everyone for coming along. If there are no final points or questions, I call the second panel.
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Geraint Talfan Davies, Chair, Welsh National Opera, Iestyn Garlick, Chair, Teledwyr Annibynnol Cymru, and Dr Rowlands, Director, Wales Literature Exchange, gave evidence.
Chair: Dr Rowlands, Mr Garlick and Mr Talfan Davies, bore da. Diolch yn fawr am ddod yma heddiw. There are not any translation facilities, so I am afraid we will be doing this in English.
Q182 Guto Bebb: I have to apologise to the panel, as I will have to leave at half-past 10. That is why I asked to jump in. I was also quite intrigued because the first question is so open-ended that I thought I would ask it. How would you define Welsh culture and how well known is it internationally? If that won’t keep you going for half an hour, I don’t know what will. Is anyone willing to charge in to that very wide question?
Dr Rowlands: Well, that is a very good question.
Guto Bebb: Not mine.
Dr Rowlands: From a literature perspective, the most productive dimension to Welsh culture is the bilingual aspect, because when you are engaging with communities worldwide, it is useful to remember that the most common situation of communities around the world is multilingualism. It is very rare to come across monolingual communities. If you are looking at India, South America, Africa, wherever—even continental Europe—it is very rare for people to speak less than two or three languages. That is the key productive dimension; I can elaborate.
Chair: No, no, that’s great; we like short answers to questions.
Iestyn Garlick: It is very difficult to sum up in a few words what culture is, but it is naturally based on your history and literature; then of course it is the languages of Wales, as has just been mentioned. We live in a bilingual society, and that is really our culture. There are the clichés of the miners, the rugby and the singing, and that is all part of it. In the end, what TAC does—or what TAC members do—is reflect that culture.
Geraint Talfan Davies: In many ways, it is whatever you want it to mean in the context of whatever debate you are having. At one level, it’s the aggregate of everything that we do—the culture of a country could even include science. But if you’re talking about, say, promoting arts and culture—as your Committee is looking at the promotion of arts and culture outside Wales—you can narrow it in different ways. If you look at one side of things, there is landscape, castles—all that is immovable; it is there. That is what Wales is. A lot of our arts activity is something that is mobile. It is something that you can move around the globe and interact with other people. So I think a lot depends on the context of your particular inquiry. If you are looking at the impact of arts and cultural activity on how Wales is defined in the world and how we define its distinctiveness—its distinctive appeal to draw people towards us—then you may be talking about a slightly narrower concept.
Q183 Guto Bebb: There is a second part to the question, which is whether it is known internationally. My own experience is that the answer is: not particularly. Are there any areas where we are known internationally in terms of our culture? In relation to literature, for example, I was reading on Sunday that less than 5% of all books sold in the UK have been translated from other languages, which is the lowest percentage of any country in Europe. So what percentage of Welsh literature is translated into other languages? Are there any success stories that we should be aware of that have highlighted Welsh culture on an international stage?
Dr Rowlands: You have some of the evidence here. We have translations into Chinese, which I can pass around. We have translations into Arabic of Cynan Jones. An Argentinean publisher has published Deborah Kay Davies in Spanish. There is Owen Martell in Paris, with his Intermède, and Angharad Price in Bengali, published in Kolkata.
Q184 Chair: Will all due respect, Dr Rowlands, that is wonderful news, but how many of those were published for commercial reasons and how many for cultural reasons? To what extent was the publishing paid for and supported by Welsh taxpayers?
Dr Rowlands: Could you give me the end of your question again?
Q185 Chair: The angle is this. It’s great to see these Welsh works published in other languages, but to what extent was the decision to do that taken for commercial reasons in the country where they are being sold? To what extent was it decided to support the publishing of Welsh literature in other languages by organisations in Wales?
Dr Rowlands: I think it is important to remember that Welsh books can have a much larger readership abroad by being translated. For example, if you think of William Owen Roberts, a Welsh language writer, the translation of Y Pla or Pestilence sold more than 20,000 copies in German—6,000 in hardback and more than 16,000 in paperback. That is a really significant figure for a Welsh language writer, whose readership is obviously limited by the number of Welsh speakers.
When it comes to considering this interplay between the commercial and the noble endeavour dimension, it is important to remember that when it comes to publishing world literature in translation, the translation costs are on top of all other normal publishing costs. When you have an organisation such as Wales Literature Exchange, which supports the translation of literature from Wales abroad, what we support is a percentage of the translation costs, not the publication costs—nothing else. Look at what other countries are doing. For example, Finland invests over €600,000 in the translation of their literature.
Q186 Guto Bebb: I don’t want to be negative on this point, but I used to have a book shop and we sold copies of Y Pla in German. I think it was Der Schwarze Tod—I can’t pronounce it; I’m not a linguist. We did sell a copy in German, which I thought was quite interesting—this is going back almost 15 or 20 years. Have there been any similar successes since then, in terms of sales?
Dr Rowlands: Yes. If we’re looking at Y Pla, William Owen Roberts work has gone on to be translated into French. It has been published in the US. It has been published in Macedonian, Romanian, Hungarian and Italian. It really is a snowball effect.
Q187 Jonathan Edwards: You mentioned Finland. What is the comparison, in terms of translation costs, between Wales and other countries? Are we spending more or less on translation?
Dr Rowlands: I was in a meeting in Brussels just two weeks ago, where we were publishing the findings of a report, which was looking at how different countries are promoting their literatures internationally and comparing their budgets and investments. It was a very embarrassing moment, because Wales is investing £10,000 a year, when one translation can cost more than £10,000, whereas among the other countries—I have a list here—the Netherlands spend over €700,000 just on translation grants, Estonia, which is perhaps more comparable, spends over €100,000, the Catalans spent €298,000 last year and the Slovaks €93,000, while the Icelandic translation fund is over €100,000. It is an embarrassment.
Q188 Guto Bebb: Literature is interesting, but what about the success in selling television?
Iestyn Garlick: I assume you’re talking specifically about selling an actual programme rather than a format.
Q189 Guto Bebb: Or a format.
Iestyn Garlick: Well, formats are being sold. It is not a huge amount, but people are making headway. The obvious things that should be looked at—of course, years ago SuperTed did very nicely, thank you.
Q190 Guto Bebb: That is going back 30 years.
Iestyn Garlick: It is going back 30 years, but it’s still there. There are various other cartoons that have been sold to al-Jazeera—I think Meees and various other things are making money for companies, but it is not vast. It is not huge. Although people might point to Doctor Who because it is made in Cardiff, it is not particularly Welsh.
Q191 Chair: Did you just say SuperTed was being sold to al-Jazeera?
Iestyn Garlick: No, I said Meees was being sold to al-Jazeera. Correct that please, Chair. A company has recently sold a series called Fferm Ffactor to China. These things are happening because the companies themselves are going to markets and selling them. Another person on the TAC council is more qualified than I am to talk about this, but he is not here today because he is in La Rochelle at the Sunny Side of the Doc festival, selling his programmes and formats. It is happening, but it is not huge.
Q192 Guto Bebb: In terms of opera, with the obvious exception of Bryn Terfel being a world renowned name, do we have any success stories?
Geraint Talfan Davies: I think that the contribution of Wales to the world of opera is completely disproportionate to its size. Wales has 3 million people. It is the same population as the city of Birmingham. Look at the roll call of people who have become major international stars in the world of opera: Sir Geraint Evans, Dame Margaret Price, Dame Gwyneth Jones, Dame Anne Evans, Bryn Terfel, Dennis O’Neill, Rebecca Evans, Stuart Burrows—you can go on for ever. It is a much more consistent factory of exceptional talent than the factory of Welsh fly-halves, dare I say.
Q193 Guto Bebb: Are they recognised as Welsh? Does that highlight Welsh culture when they are successful?
Geraint Talfan Davies: Absolutely it does. The interesting thing about Welsh National Opera is that we have to remember, in some ways, the paucity of opera provision within the UK. There are only four cities in the UK with full-scale opera companies: London, Cardiff, Leeds and Glasgow. If you went to Germany, you would find a major opera company in almost every city, but here there are only four. We are fantastically fortunate that the Welsh capital is one of those cities.
Two years ago we launched the American Friends of WNO in New York. We had a big turnout. I have to say that, quite deliberately, we did not concentrate on the Welsh diaspora. We concentrated on opera backers. We did not have George Soros, but we had his brother there. We have had excellent relations with the States. We have just put on an opera by Gordon Getty. The Getty family made a major contribution to a strand of contemporary opera that we are currently running over a period of years—a major gift of $2 million. Last December we became the first British opera company to perform at the Royal Opera House in Muscat in Oman. Next month we are performing at the Savonlinna Opera Festival in Finland. A couple of years ago we were at the Hong Kong Arts Festival performing La Bohème.
There is real recognition in the world. The world of opera is a very international business. We have in WNO an outfit that is unquestionably recognised as world class. You could put a WNO production before any audience anywhere in the world, and that would be recognised.
Q194 Glyn Davies: I was going to come in on the Welsh National Opera issue later on. The only question I have is whether we are using it. I accept what you say about the status of the Welsh National Opera across the world. I particularly remember going to Japan on the back of a Welsh National Opera tour. It was the WDA then that organised two major receptions. Virtually everybody in Japan—all the business people—came to the reception. It seemed a magnificent way to promote Wales on the back of Welsh National Opera. Are those promoting economic development and business using Welsh National Opera as a promotional vehicle as effectively as they might?
Geraint Talfan Davies: We have to recognise some realities. Shipping 200 people across the world to put on an opera is not a cheap business.
Q195 Glyn Davies: But if you were doing it anyway; if people knew you were doing it. That’s the point.
Geraint Talfan Davies: There are two issues here. It is difficult for people to do 100% funding of foreign touring of opera from this end. Increasingly, it is difficult to get people to give 100% funding from the other end, so people are looking for collaborations; but if those things are possible, we have to maximise the impact for Wales. I think I might actually have been on the visit you were referring to. When I was at the BBC, we went with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales to Tokyo in 1995. I remember coming back on the plane with the British ambassador, who said, “You might like to know that that is the biggest grouping of main board directors of top Japanese companies that I’ve ever seen in one room.” That’s the sort of thing we’ve got to aim at.
If I was looking at a strategy for how to do this for Wales, we’d need long-term planning for really big hits. The BBC Orchestra visit was a really big hit in Tokyo. When I think back to when the WNO took a major production to New York in the late ’80s, everything came on the back of it. The Secretary of State, the WDA, Prince Charles, Princess Diana—you just couldn’t buy that publicity. The profile for that was absolutely huge, and you can get that sort of impact if you use a large-scale organisation like our own.
Chair: Glyn, did you want to ask any further questions on the Welsh National Opera?
Q196 Glyn Davies: No, I don’t think there is anything beyond that. We know how important the Welsh National Opera is; it is really an issue of how we use that to benefit inward investment and I think you pretty well covered all aspects of that in your answer.
Geraint Talfan Davies: We routinely give the Welsh Government details of any possible leads we have in terms of foreign visits. They are well aware of what we are doing. We had very good Welsh Government backing when we went to Oman. We have just done a three-year deal with Covent Garden to perform there this summer, next summer and in 2016. I know that the Welsh Government want to take advantage of that as a platform for entertaining people and so on.
Q197 Jonathan Edwards: Mr Garlick, you stated in your evidence that Wales needs to have a national conversation about its brand. What do you mean by that and, if you were in charge of creating the Welsh brand, what would be its key themes?
Iestyn Garlick: When we say we want a national conversation, we are not asking for something grandiose—some huge committee or something. It just needs to be one key player from the various bodies, be that UKTI, the British Council, the Welsh Assembly Government, naturally S4C and the BBC—when I say BBC, I mean BBC Wales—and I would imagine that TAC would also have a place on that. It needs joined-up thinking. That is what we do not have at the moment.
What Geraint said about everyone going somewhere together is fantastic. At the moment we have a success with something like Hinterland, but it’s all a bit slapdash—it’s one production here, one production there. If we were all to sit round discussing and to say, “This is where we are going,” everyone could come together. There would be the distributors—I suggested earlier that the companies were maybe doing things on their own, but that is not totally true: BBC Worldwide are promoting Welsh programmes and Welsh companies, as is Sky Vision, so I should correct the impression that they weren’t. Keep it simple; that is what we’re saying.
Q198 Jonathan Edwards: Who do you think should be responsible for co-ordinating that?
Iestyn Garlick: I imagine the Welsh Assembly Government should anchor it at least. It doesn’t need to become something huge; it needs to be small, simple and sustainable.
Q199 Nia Griffith: On the issue of a Welsh brand, do you think we have a rather fossilised image of Wales? Do we need to modernise that brand?
Iestyn Garlick: There are two schools of thought on the Welsh brand. Some say that if the content is good, it will sell and if it has a Welsh feel or background to it, that is a bonus. In the end, the content has to lead it—we can’t be looking at miners, rugby and hymn singing—and I think Hinterland is doing that. What Rhodri Talfan is suggesting is that English-language productions in Wales have the language in there somewhere. Even if is the odd word, such as “cwtch”, “cariad” or “bach”, that’s what makes it more Welsh than English, and that is what we think of as a brand. I agree that we don’t want to go down the fossilised route.
Dr Rowlands: When we talk about the need for a stronger brand, and so on, I wonder whether we really mean that we need to be more confident when it comes to working internationally. We need more self-belief and we need to work to the longer term. If you look at the way the Welsh Government have been funding presence at the Frankfurt book fair and the London book fair over the past 15 years, it has been a bit like children in the playground who have not yet developed self-confidence. They go from over-emphasising themselves at one moment, at the expense of listening to and being curious about others, and then you have a jolt backwards into the wallflower way of presenting themselves.
The first few years that I went to the Frankfurt book fair, which would have been in 1997-98, I remember feeling so frustrated that I was Welsh, because the presence there was so wishy-washy. It was incoherent; it had no presence. But then how many years down the line—two years ago, if I am correct—the Welsh Government decided not to fund a presence at Frankfurt and London. It has been like that—one year yes, one year no. You can’t work internationally like that; you have to be ever-present and ever-attentive. You have to listen and be curious about other cultures.
I remember being in a meeting in which someone said, “Why on earth are we publishing Albanian literature in English translation in Wales?” Well, why on earth do you think people in Albania would be interested in reading Welsh literature in Albanian translation if your thinking is like that? If we are not curious about other peoples’ ways of living and thinking, we have no hope in hell.
Q200 Nia Griffith: To build on that, do you feel that enough is made of literature from Wales—both English medium and Welsh medium? Everybody knows about Dylan Thomas, but apart from him, do you think enough is made of it as a way of promoting and selling Wales?
Dr Rowlands: No, not at all. Of course, I would argue that a lot is done with the limited funding we have. If you look at how many books from Wales are published in translation worldwide, then yes, a lot is done with the limited funding. It’s like this: you’ve built your rocket, you have all the nails, you’ve worked out where to put all the metal parts and then somebody refuses to give you petrol to let the rocket take off. Working in this field and coming from Wales is incredibly frustrating. I have worked with writers, publishers and translators in China, India, South America and so on, and it made me realise that there is so much interest. They also find it particularly engaging that they can engage with the UK in a different way—especially countries that have, if I can say this, a historically difficult relationship with the UK. They realise that through engagement with Welsh literature, whether in English or Welsh, they have a different way of engaging with the UK. That’s a trick that not only we’re missing, but the UK Government is missing.
Iestyn Garlick: I think we’re the only country in the world that celebrates annually the writing of poetry and has it on television practically 24 hours a day for a whole week. Is it sold anywhere? No.
Q201 Jonathan Edwards: Mr Garlick, you mentioned in your evidence that there is no visible Welsh presence in the international TV marketplace. Can you explain and expand a bit more on that? What specific changes would you like to see?
Iestyn Garlick: If you go back historically, at the beginning of S4C, there was something called S4C International, which had a presence in the marketplace and sold successfully. There were series like the series on the papacy and on Egypt, and all came from that collaboration, but for various reasons—cutbacks, etcetera, etcetera—S4C International was sold to a company called Parthenon, which then diminished the S4C Wales brand, because Parthenon was selling more than just Wales. Parthenon was then, in turn, sold to Sky Vision, which, as I mentioned earlier, is promoting Welsh programmes, but along with a whole host of other programmes, so it’s all got watered down and it’s being lost. This is why we are calling for, possibly, some kind of group that would just look after the productions that come out of Wales in Welsh, and in English, of course.
Q202 Jonathan Edwards: You mentioned Y Gwyll/Hinterland in your evidence this morning. That has been sold to Danish TV and Netflix as well, I believe.
Iestyn Garlick: Yes, I think so.
Q203 Jonathan Edwards: What support do you specifically get from the Welsh Government to help to promote programmes when you have a success like that?
Iestyn Garlick: I am not entirely sure what specific support they are getting. I know that the BBC are involved in Y Gwyll/Hinterland, and so BBC Worldwide kicks in and it is a huge organisation. To have BBC backing for a production that S4C is making is huge. That helps. What funding they get from the Welsh Assembly Government and what role they have I’m not entirely sure, but I do know that the single investment fund in the past has been of great value to the production sector, as has the Alpha Fund, with support from the Welsh Assembly.
Q204 Jonathan Edwards: Do independent producers get sufficient support from the Welsh Government?
Iestyn Garlick: Not as a body. Maybe individually if companies have a good idea they can go and ask, but as a sector, not at the moment, no.
Q205 Jonathan Edwards: Is there anything we can learn from Ireland about how they market their programmes?
Iestyn Garlick: The Irish just seem to do it well. The Scots have this clear identity because of the way they speak English. You know that they are Irish. You know that they are Scottish. Why you don’t know that I am Welsh, I don’t know. Those Welsh people who have had success internationally tend to become mid-Atlantic. Tom Jones is possibly the exception to the rule. He just sounds Welsh. He sounds as if he only just got on the train in Pontypridd yesterday, and he has lived in America all his life. But he is the exception to the rule. I think something happens to us when we become famous. So that is maybe why I sound Welsh.
Geraint Talfan Davies: I am always slightly surprised that all the great successes that Wales has are called exceptions. How many exceptions do you need to be successful? Whether it is in the world of entertainment or acting with everything from Burton, Hopkins, Sheen—there is a long roll-call. I have mentioned the roll-call of opera singers. You can talk about writers like Dylan Thomas, R. S. Thomas, Gillian Clarke, Gwyneth Lewis and so on—Dannie Abse. The sheer productivity of Welsh culture is enormous. We should recognise just what impact that can have. Two things strike me. One, we need to become even more effective at using it abroad. I suggest that going with some really big hits over a period of time is worthwhile. Secondly, in the selling of Wales and trying to draw people into Wales, culture is undersold.
If you look at websites, not just the Visit Wales website but the websites for Cardiff or Swansea, you go straight to activity such as walking, golf, canoeing, pony trekking, mountain biking and so on but you struggle to find culture. You normally find it under things to do. Then you go into another subset and very often you come up with venues. For example, one website I was looking at the other day said, in terms of culture, that you can go to the Wales Millennium Centre. It is a terrific place, but there wasn’t clarity about the sheer range of what can be done.
I will take two examples. Swansea has certainly done well on the back of the Dylan Thomas thing and they put forward an extremely good bid for the UK city of culture. I happened to be on the jury for that and they didn’t win, but they put up an extremely good case and you could see the richness that Swansea had to offer. If you look at Cardiff and the music provision in the capital city, I sometimes wonder why we don’t strapline it, “the city of music.” There is the Wales Millennium Centre, Hoddinott Hall, St David’s Hall, the new building of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Welsh National Opera, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Music Theatre Wales, Sinfonia Cymru, Vale of Glamorgan festival, the Llandaff music festival, the national dance company and so on. I was talking to two people who are great supporters of WNO and they have moved from Bristol to Cardiff simply because they can access music almost every night of the week. That is something that we are not using to promote it.
Q206 Chair: Cardiff “city of music” has a wonderful feel and I am sure we are making note of that. I am sorry to butt in, but I have to gently move us on a bit. Do all of you think that there is sufficient awareness of Welsh culture within British organisations, particularly the British Council, which we visited last week, and the Foreign Office?
Geraint Talfan Davies: I suspect that in all British organisations, getting awareness of a part of the country that is 5% of the population is always tough. I experienced it for 10 years within the BBC and the sentence I came to hate more than anything else was “and to a lesser extent in Wales.” It was a real problem. The British Council clearly does a vital job. Like a lot of other public organisations, I am sure it has had budgetary issues and constraints in recent years. Looking through their literature, annual reports and reports on activity, I think it is an organisation that ought to be more geographically aware of the potential of the cultural assets right throughout the country.
Can I mention one specific example? At the moment, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are represented on the board of the British Council by one person. As it happens, at the moment it is the Chairman of the Wales committee, but it is a two-year rotation so that person will represent all three countries. That seems to me a little bit passé and a bit old-fashioned. I cannot really see why an organisation like the British Council wouldn’t have representatives of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on as a matter of course, much as the BBC Trust has representatives of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Q207 Chair: I saw you nodding there, Dr Rowlands.
Dr Rowlands: I agree with that. I think coming from our perspective, the literature perspective, the main challenge we face when working in partnership with the British Council is having sufficient funding from Wales in order to partner with it. I think they would be very keen and happy to partner more—they have, of course—if we could bring the matching funding to the table. At the moment, we are not in that position so that is the main hindrance.
Iestyn Garlick: I agree entirely with what has been said. My only experience of the British Council was a very pleasurable three weeks in Sweden doing Under Milk Wood but that was back in the ’70s. I think this is exactly what we are asking for. We must stop complaining, and we need to do something about it ourselves. You have to start where you have your feet.
Q208 Nia Griffith: You will have heard that there has been some criticism of UKTI. What is your assessment of how it promotes Welsh interests? What interaction, if any, have you had with the organisation?
Iestyn Garlick: Very simply, I’d say that it is the same issue as the British Council and everything else: it is trying to be all things to all men, and it’s just not going to work, because, “and to a lesser extent in Wales” is always there, isn’t it? That’s the attitude. I think they should be partners, but not the main thing.
Geraint Talfan Davies: We haven’t had any direct contact with UKTI, except that, on the recent visit to Oman last December, there was a representative from the Welsh Government there. There was a very big turnout of business and industry people. The British ambassador gave a reception at the embassy, where we had two performers giving a recital. That had major representation from the Omani Government and Omani business, particularly from the British Omani Friendship Society, which came up with some significant sponsorship of the company. There are some real benefits to be had, and as a direct result of that, the Welsh Government asked us to provide singers to go again, several months later, to a week in which they were promoting Wales in Doha in Qatar.
Q209 Stephen Doughty: That probably follows on quite nicely into my question. The Secretary of State for Wales and the First Minister have undertaken a number of trade visits over the last couple of years: the US, the far east, the middle east and elsewhere. Do you think enough is being made of those visits to promote Wales culturally? What do you think could be done more to ensure that cultural assets are part of those trade delegations?
Geraint Talfan Davies: The suggestion has been made that with these trade delegations, it is useful to have some cultural input there. Particularly if you are trying to sell the place, businesses, I would have thought, need all the hard data and need to know about land, factories, skills, products and so on. They also need to get some sense of the place. If there are ways in which all arts and cultural organisations can build links in different places, once you start opening up these conversations, you never quite know where they are going to end. Some extremely fruitful conversations have come from these meetings.
Q210 Stephen Doughty: Do you get approached as a matter of course? You mentioned performers going out to Oman. Do you and the Culture Secretary get approached to be part of these delegations, or is it just if they think about it?
Geraint Talfan Davies: I don’t think we have been approached specifically in relation to trade delegations. That is not to say that we have not done things on our own account. We took the initiative in Oman. Our managing director went out to the world theatre forum in Beijing about 18 months ago. We have had placements within the Welsh National Opera from Wu Promotion in China; somebody came over and spent a month at a time with us. At the moment, that hasn’t borne fruit in a specific trip to China, but sometimes these things take a little time to come to fruition.
Iestyn Garlick: Bear in mind that an awful lot of people in the Welsh television sector have been trained by the BBC. Without a doubt, the BBC training is probably the best in the world and is recognised as such. What we have in the far east is this incredible technology, which is just getting better and quicker at every turn—every month, nearly. We have the experience; they have the technology. There are companies that are part of the TAC council that are working in conjunction with Korea at the moment to make a co-production, using their technology and the Welsh expertise. We should do more of that.
Dr Rowlands: I know that the First Minister has been taking books on trips. For example, when he was in India recently he took translations of Welsh literature into Malay and Tamil. That can be very effective. It stays in people’s mind when you can hand them a book.
Q211 Stephen Doughty: Just one last question. I love the idea of Cardiff as a “city of music” and I think that is absolutely fantastic, but do you think enough is being made of promoting specific festivals and specific events across Wales as a way of attracting people to come, or could more be done?
Geraint Talfan Davies: Wales is very fortunate in having a number of high profile events—the National Eisteddfod, Llangollen, Urdd Eisteddfod, the Hay festival, a lot of very good smaller festivals. The WNO Orchestra is performing at the Fishguard festival in a couple of weeks’ time and also performing at Chepstow racecourse—a slightly different ambience.
Oddly enough, I think that the one festival that is lacking is a festival that is centred on the capital city. There is a Cardiff festival, of sorts, and it has been local authority backed, but if you looked at the programme, you would say that it is largely for the domestic audience. It is not there to be a big international pull. I am not saying that you can do an Edinburgh. If you did create a festival of that kind it need not necessarily be confined to Cardiff—it might have a rather broader footprint. However, when you look at the data on Edinburgh, I was looking at some the other day for the Edinburgh Fringe: 25 days, 2 million tickets for 40,000 shows at 279 venues, sustaining about 4,000 jobs in the city. That is pretty big stuff. I am not saying that you can do that, but you have a lot of major national organisations in the capital city and I feel if we could somehow get the pieces of the jigsaw, move them around a bit until they all start to fit together, you might be able to create something that was greater than the sum of the parts.
I do not want to set up a silly contest in funding, but take something like the Wales Rally GB. The expenditure on the Wales Rally GB is for a two-day event, three days at most—there might well be business spin-offs for the automotive industry and so on—but if you put the same sum of money towards a cultural festival you could run something for a couple of weeks. I think there is a lot that could be done. I was very struck talking to an hotelier in Cardiff recently when he said he was quite surprised when he came to the city that the quietest months were July and August, which is counter-intuitive. There is a lot that could be done on that front and there are discussions going on between the various parties.
Dr Rowlands: To pick up on the letter which this Committee sent to us recently and the interest by the city of Buenos Aires in working further with Wales. Things are already developing on that front and there is real interest in seeing whether we can create some kind of twinning over a period of the year between Cardiff and Buenos Aires, something it has been doing with other cities in Europe.
Chair: I think we are about to hear from Lord Wigley on that in a moment.
Glyn Davies: May I ask a question? It is related, but a different line. People visit Wales or any country because to a large extent they have heard of Wales and they know about it. This is where, when we talk about people like Tom Jones and Bryn Terfel, it has an impact, because people around the world have heard of these stars. The best known person is probably Gareth Bale who plays for Real Madrid. I think sport has got a massive potential, but have we got a problem? I think we have a problem with the British media, which are almost all based in London and treat Wales as an afterthought.
I can give you an example that infuriated me hugely last weekend when the English rugby team was smashed by the All Blacks. Wales played brilliantly at the weekend. We lost by a point and we will probably be the world champions next week. I buy The Sunday Telegraph. Its front page and pages 13 and 14 were solidly all about England, with a little bit at the bottom of page 14 about Wales. It is absolutely shocking. I can write to The Telegraph sports editor and be utterly appalled, which I will, but I think this is a common thing. We have a challenge in having the British media recognise Wales. Only if it is England will the British media cover it. I know they relate to the people who read it, but I think that that is a real problem. That one example last week typified it more than anything I have seen in ages.
Rugby is part of Welsh culture. I know we try to move on, but we play rugby in Wales and we play it pretty well, and it was just dismissed as a complete afterthought by the British media, and a lot of people around the world read the British media.
Iestyn Garlick: The problem we have, even within Wales itself, is that the Western Mail is not the best-selling paper in Wales. Never mind what you think about the Western Mail, we are not buying our own newspaper.
Geraint Talfan Davies: I take your point about newspapers and media coverage. It might be the subject of another inquiry, because it is a very big subject that I do not want to go into, but what I would say on culture is that the critics do come down to cover productions by the WNO. You do see reviews of concerts by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and reviews of the National Theatre Wales. In some senses, culture is the way we can make Wales talked about in the British media rather more effectively. You are not going to change the nature of the British media. There is no magic wand, but, if our output is good enough, people will want to beat a path to Wales and they will write about it. There is a lot to be explored there.
Chair: I know you want to come in as well, Dr Rowlands. Can I ask Stephen to ask his final question?
Q212 Stephen Doughty: This is a small point. I have asked this in previous evidence sessions. Do you think there is a gap in the Welsh market for a more youth-focused or popular music type festival such as Glastonbury or the Isle of Wight, but perhaps with other stuff alongside it? People travel from all over Europe to go to Roskilde in Denmark. Do you think there is a gap in the market for specifically that age group and profile?
Iestyn Garlick: But are any of these festivals indicative of where they are held? Does Glastonbury have a headline act from Somerset?
Chair: A very good act called Rusty Shackle, from Monmouthshire, are playing at Glastonbury this year. You have just given me the excuse to mention it.
Iestyn Garlick: I will consider myself told.
Stephen Doughty: As a festival often for British bands and a chance for new bands to come through on the side stages, there is a lot of potential there for Welsh bands, Welsh music and Welsh literature and culture on the side of a couple of big headliners, and we do not seem to have a big festival of that nature.
Geraint Talfan Davies: At my age, I am entering into dangerous territory. There has been a good popular music festival in Cardiff in recent years. I do not know whether you would classify the Green Man festival up at Crickhowell as being in the same sort of category. It might be a slightly different market, but it does not necessarily have to be the big one. People tell me that they are very attracted by smaller scale festivals, rather than some festivals that some would say have become too big.
Iestyn Garlick: Bryn Terfel had his festival in north Wales for many years, but that does not happen any more for various reasons. One day of that festival was specifically for Welsh bands to play on a huge stage, with the best possible sounds. It was a fantastic idea and it would be great if it came back.
Chair: The last word to Dr Rowlands, who might be a bit more of the festival age group.
Dr Rowlands: When it comes to festivals and events in Wales, we could be doing far more to create an international context for what we do in Wales so that we are then able to communicate to the world beyond Wales that we are open and curious, and that we want to engage with other cultures. That is something we are not doing enough of. We really could be doing far more of that. It is key to moving from where we are now.
Chair: Thank you very much indeed. Diolch yn fawr iawn.
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: David Anderson, Director General, Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum Wales) Nick Capaldi, Chief Executive, Arts Council Wales, and Right Hon. Lord Dafydd Wigley, President, Steering Committee for 150 year Patagonia celebrations, Wales-Argentina Society, gave evidence.
Chair: Welcome, gentlemen. Diolch yn fawr iawn am ddod.
Q213 Glyn Davies: I know that this panel sat at the back as we talked to the previous witnesses, and one of the issues we talked a bit about was the definition of Welsh culture. I threw in my bit by suggesting that sport is an important part of Welsh culture. How do you define Welsh culture, and how well known do you think it is—not just in Britain, but internationally?
Nick Capaldi: One of the phrases we have tended to use when talking about Welsh culture is, “Small nation, big art.” We heard something of that in the previous evidence session, in terms of individuals and organisations such as the Welsh National Opera and National Theatre Wales, which are of truly international quality and reputation. We all need to do more to stress that. When I think about Welsh culture, and especially when I talk to people internationally—those who know something of Welsh culture—the words that tend to come up are “quirky”, “innovative”, “unusual”, “friendly”, “collaborative” and “curious”. There is a willingness, when working on the international stage, to collaborate and find out more about different cultures. We notice that when artists from Wales travel abroad and make connections, those connections can be incredibly fruitful and positive.
Lord Wigley: Thank you for being here. I am wearing a non-party political hat today, of course. By the way, I must make a declaration of interest, because my daughter works for Wales Arts International and is partly answerable to Mr Capaldi.
There are common threads in Welsh culture that stand out. In terms of our love of music, flair and skill come through. There is an ability with words that some other countries do not have. There is a communal, participative dimension to our culture, and there is also a competitive dimension that you rarely get, but was mentioned earlier—how poets compete with each other, for example. Those threads come together in a unique synthesis. It is worth projecting and there is value in doing so.
In regard to how we organise ourselves, there are events that succeed in getting the cultural dimension across. The Llangollen eisteddfod, which is on the week after next, is a glorious example of an initiative that has succeeded. We had “Cardiff Singer of the World”. The WOMEX exhibition in Cardiff brought people from all over the world and gave a stage for Welsh talent to exhibit itself and to then get work overseas as a result of that. At home in Caernarfon, our family have been involved in the international harp festival. There are many dimensions that can bring the world to Wales, but the common threads we have are ones that we have to project in order to get them.
David Anderson: Because the National Museum looks at the complete historical spectrum of Wales as well as contemporary Wales, we would define it as everything created by people in Wales, but also as a living culture enriched by contact, exchange and migration, so obviously the international dimension is important as well. I fully support what was said about the participative and communal dimensions. I have worked in museums, mostly in England, before coming to Wales, and I have never come across a museum that is loved like St Fagans. There is no English museum anywhere near it in that way. That is about a connectivity between at least one part of Welsh culture and the people, and that should really be cherished. An important part of St Fagans is the non-material culture. Museums collect objects, but museums like St Fagans hold oral archives and all sorts of other intangible elements of culture that are really vital, and are often the things most shared by people outside a building’s walls.
Q214 Glyn Davies: Promoting culture is a really good thing. We are all Welsh and are proud to see Welsh culture promoted around the world. It is useful to promote that into knowledge of Wales as somewhere people will visit and create trade, and to have those sorts of practical, almost non-cultural benefits flowing from the knowledge and appreciation of Welsh culture. Do you think we do that as effectively as we should? Who might take a lead on that?
Lord Wigley: If I can come in on that, my background was an industrial background at one time. It almost goes without saying that non-industrial factors can influence the industrial location decisions of companies. We had a classic example of that with the DPC corporation, which came to Llanberis. Jim Watson—Watson and Crick DNA—came over to see the site. We knew that his delight was in hill walking and food, and when he went back to the main board in Los Angeles, he could not stop talking about the delights of Wales in terms of those two factors. They asked him about the location: “Oh, sure, the location is all right, but you should have seen the food and the countryside.” The same can be true of culture, and we need to use a whole range of tools to reach people. Maybe the diaspora we have is part of that, but reaching people beyond the diaspora is even more important.
Nick Capaldi: It needs to be locked into every aspect of promoting Wales abroad. Lord Wigley is right that if you are a business person, or are thinking of relocating to a different part of the world, the quality of life for you, your family, your workers and employees will be a pretty important factor in deciding where you want to be.
David Anderson: I support that. There is quite a lot of evidence that even students decide which university they go to depending on how much they think the city or area will be a really lovely place to study, quite apart from the quality of the courses. I have certainly heard a lot that students absolutely love Cardiff as a place to study because of the rich cultural environment. It is a deciding factor, and it is not uncommon for people who come as students later to base business decisions on a love of their experience of the country earlier on in their lives.
Lord Wigley: Of course, it is not only culture. The success that Swansea have had after reaching the premiership and the way that has projected through into Asia has been a tremendous opportunity for the city in many wider contexts.
Q215 Glyn Davies: When I was involved in promoting mid-Wales, we had a brilliant development director whose view was that we were being successful and people moved to Wales for eccentricity and serendipity. Building on those two, so much of it is completely unrelated business factors that lead people to come here and then set up a business for all sorts of reasons. To promote the name of Wales at every big event across the world, you need to have people in that country being invited along to know that it is Wales, not just something from Britain.
Lord Wigley: Yes, and we have an opportunity now. We have Obama coming over, and of course Obama is a percentage Welsh, through the Perrys of Anglesey. We have Hillary Clinton whose father was Welsh. Are we using these linkages to maximise our opportunities?
Q216 Nia Griffith: Yesterday I was at a meeting where we heard Visit Britain speak about how it promotes Wales. I was horrified that it was just coastline; it did not seem to have the concept of city breaks. Particularly Amgueddfa Cymru and the Arts Council, I wonder how you promote yourselves abroad and how important foreign visitors are to you. What more do you think could be done by an organisation such as Visit Britain? I was thinking of things like London-Bath-Cardiff— that type of package—but they did not seem to be on the radar.
Nick Capaldi: Perhaps I will take the Visit Britain point first. The clue is in the title. Britain does include Wales. All too often there has been a slight sense that it means England, London and a few scraps. While we as an organisation have an excellent and positive relationship with Visit Wales, as one would expect, I think there is a slight sense of frustration that we cannot have a similar relationship with Visit Britain.
In terms of what we do to promote international activity and relations, we have within the Arts Council a division called Wales Arts International, which is part-funded by the British Council and is in partnership with it. That is about exchange that is both exporting our own artists abroad and making connections, and bringing work in. In a country with a population of 3 million, artists and arts organisations need a bigger market. Therefore, for us, developing those international opportunities for artists, particularly around Europe, to get those work opportunities is really important, but so, too, is attracting something like the international music trade fair, WOMEX, to Cardiff last year, which brought representatives from more than 100 countries. The reports we had back from that said that it was an overwhelmingly successful event, so 4,000 delegates will travel back to their home countries with a very clear impression of Wales and talking positively about Cardiff.
David Anderson: One benefit of museums working internationally is the very large number of people who can be reached by them. There was the “Wales, Land of the Red Dragon” exhibition that opened in Chongqing last year, and was seen by 96,000 people during the four months that it was on show there.
Going back to the discussion about connections with business opportunities and industry, one of the fantastic benefits of having an exhibition on for four months in a major public space in one of the leading Chinese cities is that it is a base that can be used as a backdrop and meeting point for higher education institutions and Welsh business during that whole four-month period. The “Wales, Land of the Red Dragon” exhibition was intended as a historical and cultural overview of Wales, deliberately to provide a context for Chinese visitors who may not be familiar with Wales. We regarded that as a great success from Wales’s point of view—from wider potential for tourism and business, and a higher education perspective.
We also sent an exhibition a few years earlier on flight to the United Arab Emirates, which stayed there for a long time. An exhibition a few years ago on the Davies sisters’ art collection went to five venues across the United States and was seen by 200,000 people. An exhibition on landscape is going out again next year—2015-16—and will go to four venues in the United States. We are building up hundreds of thousands of people who are getting exposure to Wales and Welsh cultural life—for a relatively small investment, it has to be said. We think we get a big impact because of that. The challenge, in some ways, is to get UK-wide support and coverage. The British Council has been tremendous. We would not have been able to put on the “Wales, Land of the Red Dragon” exhibition in Chongqing if it had not been such consistent supporters over months and months, ensuring that the relationships were being supported on the ground. I have, perhaps, more uncertainty about the degree to which the BBC is promoting all elements of Welsh culture, but that is another issue.
Q217 Stephen Doughty: I want to ask David a specific question. You mentioned the Davies sisters’ collection, which I think is absolutely magnificent. I am always amazed that friends who come from abroad have no idea that that is there. It is great to hear that it is being promoted in the US. What links do you have with the art museums in London? For example, there are people who come to spend a couple of days here and think about where else they might go in the UK, but they are visiting the Tate and elsewhere and then realise there are some absolutely amazing collections down the road. Do you get supported by the big London museums to bring people out of London and into Wales as an entry point into wider things that we do?
David Anderson: We do have exhibition exchanges with London. For example, the Queen exhibition, which went to Edinburgh and Belfast, and was originally in London, came to Cardiff as well. There are a lot of object loans. We are doing a partnership at the moment with the Tate with the recently acquired Constable, which attracted a very big audience in Cardiff when it was shown. It was the first venue where the painting was shown. There are other issues around the London cultural organisations’ perceptions of Wales: a director of a leading art museum in London recently said to me, “Why should I come to Cardiff? There is nothing there.”
As you will know only too well, there is sometimes an element of Londoncentricity in attitudes. It is there among some of the leading art institutions and it is sometimes there in the BBC. We struggle to get Artes Mundi, for example, any coverage with the BBC. Year by year, the Turner prize is covered, blanket, on Radio 4, television and everything like that. Artes Mundi, in my view, is at least equal and, according to some Tate insiders and many others, the superior contemporary art competition, yet, to my knowledge, it has never had any coverage on the BBC network, so there are other issues around this about attitudes.
Q218 Nia Griffith: Perhaps we could move on to the issue of brand, which you have heard discussed by others. What do you see as the issue with brand? Is it something you want to create? Is it possible to create? Do you go along with TAC’s view that there ought to be a convention to decide upon it?
Lord Wigley: When the National Assembly was set up in 1999, there was—Chair, you will remember this—an initiative taken to try to get a branding for Wales to have a higher profile at the time of “Cool Cymru”.
Q219 Chair: “Enter the Dragon” or something, wasn’t it? Was that what it was called?
Lord Wigley: Yes, but it never really clicked, did it? It never really took off. In terms of brand, the most important thing of all is that the image and the substance have to identify with each other. There is no use projecting something that ain’t there. We have to be able to get something across that people find is there. I am sure that the brand does matter. Touching on what was discussed earlier, the greatest brand that we had, flying across the Atlantic dozens of times every day, was the WDA commercial. That reached thousands of decision takers. To have lost that brand—the investment that went into building up the WDA brand—overnight, virtually, was an absolute tragedy. It was a betrayal of what we need in Wales.
Nick Capaldi: I share some of Lord Wigley’s wariness about brand, if it simply becomes a slogan that is just superficial, and is here today, gone tomorrow. What we perhaps need to concentrate on are a series of well defined but enduring messages that talk about the quality of life in Wales, and the things that are good and have meaning and authenticity. These messages should be used consistently. My heart sinks at the prospect of groups of people going into a room to try to come up with a logo and a three-word phrase. We need to rehearse and practise among ourselves what it is we value about Welsh culture, and be clear about defining that and make sure that when we are travelling internationally, we promote those messages.
David Anderson: I would echo what has been said. It is vital that everything that is associated with the images of Wales are those things that are about quality and the warmth that people really experience when they come to Wales for the first time. I had some international visitors over the weekend and they were overwhelmed by how friendly and welcoming people were. One of them said they had never met a friendlier group of staff than they found at the National Museum on Saturday morning. In terms of overseas reception and the “Wales, Land of the Red Dragon” exhibition in Chongqing, I found a huge amount of curiosity and interest in the dragon and the connection of the colour red with Wales. I suppose it is possible to undervalue the strength of that identity because if one tries to think of the English brand, I personally think the Welsh one is a better one to build on in some ways than the rather complex and uncertain one that England has.
Q220 Chair: Mr Anderson, you said that you would welcome a more co-ordinated effort from the Welsh Assembly Government to work with national museums to promote what you do. Would you like to elaborate a little on that?
David Anderson: One thing relates to what Geraint Talfan Davies said. There is potential for us to bring our efforts together to make something much more powerful. So the exhibition goes alongside maybe the appearance of the opera company, alongside performing arts, and really making a major hit in a city and getting a scale of publicity, perhaps in the country as well, that we would not otherwise get. There is something more that can be done. I think that Visit Wales has shifted very significantly in the last year or two. That is already bringing dividends in terms of the number of visitors coming into Wales from what I can see. The greater emphasis on the cultural attractions of Wales that Visit Wales is doing is having an impact. It goes back to our earlier conversation.
Q221 Chair: Mr Capaldi, to what extent have you been involved in the trade missions that have gone on with the Welsh Assembly Government, if any? What has come out of those?
Nick Capaldi: It has been ad hoc. On some occasions, it has been very good; on others, it has been a little last minute. The secret to getting this right is proper preparation over a long period. One of the difficulties sometimes is matching the aspirations and plans of the cultural sector with the foreign delegations that the First Minister and other Ministers are making. It is about sharing and exchanging the information.
There have been some highly successful trade delegations; I am thinking particularly of the First Minister’s trip last year to Maharashtra, India, where we had been working with groups for some time prior to the visit. It created an opportunity for a very distinctive collaborative cultural offer as part of the trade delegation. That makes these visits and delegations memorable.
Making things memorable is important. When decision-makers and business people are thinking about the wide plethora of events, receptions and trade delegations that they have been to, the ones that stand out are those that had personality—where you were able to make a personal connection. So what we are doing at the moment with the Welsh Government, and in particular with the First Minister’s office, is trying to get better advance notice. Arts and cultural organisations can sometimes over-protect their future plans because they don’t want to announce something until they are ready. But I think better co-ordination will bring benefits all round.
Q222 Jonathan Edwards: The Welsh language project in Patagonia is administered by the British Council, as you know. When we visited Argentina, they informed us that they had distributed thousands of laptops with English language apps in Argentina, but yet there have been no laptops with Welsh language apps in Patagonia. Do you think that the British Council is doing an adequate job?
Lord Wigley: First of all, can I say how glad I was that you had, as a Committee, visited Patagonia? I welcomed a delegation from Trelew in my hometown in Caernarfon on a twinning project only three or four weeks ago. They were high in their praise of the fact that you had taken the trouble to go down there. That is important.
The British Council has played a positive role in terms of Wales generally within the Argentine and has linked up with the community in Chubut. In the 1965 centenary, which I visited, the British Council played a significant role there. But it does depend, to some extent, on the people they have in post at any point in time.
I believe that there is a new appointment now; a lady whose first mission was to go straight down to Chubut to link up with the Welsh community. That is a positive sign that they are perhaps more sensitive to this dimension. Certainly, they need to work on this, because the Welsh dimension in the Argentine is something that could do so much to help relationships between the United Kingdom and the Argentine, which need to be rebuilt.
Q223 Jonathan Edwards: You are on the steering committee for the 150th commemorations.
Lord Wigley: I am president of the steering committee, but not the chair. Marc Phillips chairs it.
Q224 Jonathan Edwards: Can you give us some examples of some of the events being planned? Do you have confidence that the local community groups are co-ordinating effectively between Wales and Argentina?
Lord Wigley: I make it clear that the 150 years celebration committee set up four years ago by the Wales-Argentine society is a co-ordinating committee, to try and stimulate interest and to encourage bodies the length and breadth of Wales to be involved, and likewise in Patagonia. However, we are not undertaking the activities ourselves, as that would be totally impossible.
There has been a range of activities that have come, almost spontaneously, during the past four years and that should be coming to a peak next year. For example, the BBC have commissioned a Patagonian composer, Hector McDonald, to compose special music for the occasion; National Theatre Wales is considering projects; a celebrating committee in Liverpool is having an event to recall the Mimosa sailing from there; Galeri Caernarfon will have Gwyl Gwanwyn, an annual celebration, in Caernarfon; the Kyffin Williams, a gallery in Llangefni, will be sponsoring Luned Gonzales to come from Patagonia to give a lecture; the Royal Welsh agricultural show; Monmouthshire is the county in charge next year, and they are inviting people from Patagonia over and organising an exhibition; the Urdd has its own programme; the National Eisteddfod in Meifod is expected to have several Patagonian themes; the Velindre hospital appeal is sponsoring a walk down in the Andes; Challenge Wales—this is an exciting one—is hoping to arrange for young people from both Wales and Patagonia to sail the Atlantic down to Patagonia; and there are plans for local plaques and possibly street names. There is a whole range of things.
In Patagonia itself, there are two committees—one down in Dyffryn Camwy around Trelew, and the other in Cwm Hyfryd around Esquel—that have their own programmes. We are linking up with them as well.
Q225 Jonathan Edwards: The mayor of Trelew was recently in Westminster. He said something that particularly struck me. He said that, for Wales, the Patagonia relationship is a part of our national history and our national story, but for them, it is the first major event in their history. Do you think that we need to take it a bit more seriously in Wales—having a delegate from Patagonia here, for instance?
Lord Wigley: From 1913 to 1965, there had been very little link between Wales and Patagonia. People had gone out there, and they had always been left to their own devices. Since the centenary, there has been much more interaction—people coming and going—and an awareness of each other.
One of the main themes that the Welsh Government are taking on board as part of the celebration is to build into the educational structure in Wales, into the curriculum, elements that will be relevant to Patagonia. A lot of work has been done on this and there is some resource being put in. Interactive materials, for example, are being done in three languages—Welsh, English and Spanish—so that it is going to be relevant in Patagonia as well. This is a very significant move forward, but there is certainly a lot more that can be done. Your idea of a Patagonia day could well be taken up.
Q226 Stephen Doughty: It was an amazing experience to go out to Patagonia and meet them and it was great to meet the Mayor of Trelew when he came back. It is good to hear you mentioning the Challenge Wales proposal. I was recently on the boat—it was in Penarth marina—and they were very excited that I had been there and knew what the Mimosa was.
There are obviously the folks at the celebration—this is maybe for some of the other members of the panel—but what potential do you think there is for much longer-standing cultural trade and exchange that goes beyond people just going back and forth for specific events?
Lord Wigley: Can I briefly respond to that with one major dimension that our Committee has very high in its mind? The legacy from this year is what is going to be important. The legacy of 1965 was a tremendous boost on both sides. The legacy of this has to be planned. I was on the Olympic and Paralympic Legacy Committee in the House of Lords and the main thing we found there was the importance of planning legacy in advance. This is something that has to be built into next year’s celebrations.
Nick Capaldi: A number of the projects that Lord Wigley mentioned were invested in and the legacy element is absolutely key to that. It is not just about taking artists from Wales to Patagonia, but making sure that that exchange and collaboration is locked in.
What we know from experience, time after time, is that these relationships stick. Creative people who make a connection, who feel comfortable working with each other, develop new projects and new ideas. We have seen relationships that are now extending to decades come from a series of initial meetings and exchanges. As well as building it into the design of the projects themselves, I am very confident that artists and creative people, given the type of people they are, will make enduring friendships.
Chair: Did you want to ask Jessica Morden’s questions, Stephen?
Q227 Stephen Doughty: We touched on the trade fairs and trade links earlier and, with the National Museum of Wales, you mentioned that you didn’t feel that Wales was adequately represented in international trade fairs and elsewhere. We have heard in some of the previous evidence about Welsh representation not being in some of these trade delegations when they go abroad. Can you comment on that further? What do you think needs to change?
David Anderson: I went with the Welsh one. I do get invited sometimes to the trade delegations. I went with the First Minister to the Chongqing and Beijing a couple of years ago.
One of the striking things was the importance that the key people we met in China put on culture. On the first day we were there it was the governor of Chongqing, Bo Xilai, and he said that what he values in a relationship with Wales is culture, business and education. We saw the Mayor of Chongqing that evening and he said, “We really value the cultural connections with Wales” and then went on to talk about other things.
When we listed the things that the MOU between Chongqing and Wales had produced, virtually everything that had been achieved during the previous few years from that MOU were arts and culture. We would be very foolish to undervalue the importance that other societies and other cultures place on cultural relationships as the foundation for everything else. That was a big lesson for me.
As far as the UK is concerned, in my four years in my present role I have never been invited by a UK trade delegation to accompany them abroad. I know that London institutions are, but I have never had that experience. It may have happened in the past, but I have never heard of it having happened in the past from my colleagues in the museum.
Nick Capaldi: I agree. I remember the very big delegation that the UK Prime Minister took to China. It was with a certain frustration that I saw among the crowd at the top of the stairs in front of the plane the grinning face of the Arts Council England chair. I thought, “Why is my chair not represented there as well?”
On UK-level trade delegations, I think there is a lot of work to be done. It is getting better at a Wales level, although it has to be about consistency and planning. I have been struck, in talking to colleagues within arts councils around Europe, that the Danish, for example, have a dedicated unit within it whose sole job is to ensure that every time the Queen or the Prime Minister travels abroad, there is a cultural dimension to that visit or trip. They clearly see the value of that, and it is locked into how they do business.
David Anderson: May I add one more thing? The Welsh delegation on that First Minister visit a couple of years ago went to Beijing and the British embassy there. A senior official met us and told us all about Jeremy Hunt’s visit to Beijing as the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and all the initiatives in England on culture.
After a few minutes, it occurred to us that he had not realised that there is a Welsh Minister for Culture and Sport. We then had a conversation about the Minister for Culture and Sport; I think it was then Huw Lewis. If you are talking about cultural relationships between the embassy and us as a group, it should be in that context. There is an issue about the basic understanding of devolution on the part of some highly educated people.
Chair: On that note, thank you all very much for coming along this afternoon. That draws our session to a close.
International Representation and Promotion of Wales by UK bodies, HC 1206 2