Global Gardens, a wonderful Cardiff project that supports intercultural exchange through gardening, cooking and eating, is one of five Welsh projects in the running for a share of up to £150,000 of funding.
But they need your vote! Now in its 13th year, the Big Lottery Fund, ITV Wales and The National Lottery are teaming up to give the public a chance to decide how National Lottery funding should be put to good use in their local area.
The Global Gardens Project runs weekly garden sessions at the allotment site and monthly suppers at the Embassy Café in Cardiff. If successful, this funding will help Global Gardens Project to develop the gardening and cooking activities offered and facilities on site. This includes development of a small kitchen so that dishes from the garden can be cooked on site. Their aim is to make the site more welcoming and accessible to people.
The Garden also won funding from Grow Wild to to deliver a series of practical workshops and identification walks, with the aim of inspiring and educating a future generation of seed-savers and fungi enthusiasts.
The Seeds and Spores Projectwill start on 21 April (10.30am-4.30pm) at the Global Gardens site, with a workshop on outdoor fungi cultivation with fungi enthusiast Rich Wright.
In June, Annwen Jones (Rhizome Clinic) will be leading a workshop on a range of healing native plants found. They will also be hosting a seed-saving workshop with Green City.
There will also be opportunities to develop identification skills later this year-Rich Wright (Feed Bristol) will be leading a fungi identification walk, and Julian Woodman (Glamorgan Botanical Group) will lead a walk on native plants in the local area.
International fungi expert Prof Lynne Body will talk about the good, the bad and the ugly (in fungi terms).
The workshops and walks are free but places are limited so book a place to avoid disappointment.
Throughout the project they will be creating a zine and various artwork, and the project will culminate with an exhibition in the Global Gardens Greenhouse. So, if you are an artist who would like to get involved, they also want to hear from you!
Hold on to your pants, one of our favourite Cardiff bands (who played at our book launch back in 2015) are dropping their debut album this week as a Christmas gift to you all! Here’s Robin from the Jutes to take you through the album track by track, along with a video (made by our very own Jameso) and some gorgeous album art….
A scene-setter rather than a first song, really, this was an instrumental guitar piece I’d had knocking around for a while that we quickly jammed and recorded in the studio. We recorded all of the basic tracks for this EP in one hectic day in the Music Box this spring – live as bass, drums and guitar, and pretty much in the same sequence as the track-listing.
Sadly Dan – our bassist – couldn’t make it, so Adam deputised on bass as well engineering/producing with his brother Paul. Adam was a complete monster – playing all these songs for the first time on the day we recorded them. I imagined this as the soundtrack to a shot of a car driving towards the vanishing point in the American mid-west at sunset. Not sure that explains the frog noises.
Track 2: Light a match
An attempt at a punchy, crowd-pleasing first proper song, we tried to channel Yo La Tengo and the Lemonheads, with hopefully some Real Estate guitar on the chorus. It’s one of only two songs on the EP about anything – distracting yourself from existential boredom by chit-chat and getting drunk. I tried to go full J Mascis with the guitar solo, but perhaps mustered up a slightly virile Norman Blake from Teenage Fanclub.
Track 3: Dear Susan
I really love Orange Juice (Edwyn Collin’s early-’80s fusion of the Byrds, Chic and fey Scottish teenagers with plastic sandals and fringes like Roger McGuinn) and this is intended as a straight-up homage.
The first line (“Evidently my dear Susan”) seemed like the sort of comically overblown thing Edwyn Collins would sing, though I couldn’t quite manage the voice – which Alexis Petridis described as like “a tipsy man launching into an after-dinner speech with his mouth still full of port and walnuts”. The lyrics are an aggressive take-down of religious extremism, which should hopefully sort a few things out.
Track 4: Gallic Way
When I formed the band I basically wanted us to be Pavement, but we could never manage their nonchalant slacker charm. Sounding like you don’t care and still being good is really hard! This is probably as close as we got. I think Neil nailed the drums, which sound like someone very drunk falling down the stairs holding a pint and somehow not spilling a drop.
The lyrics are fairly Malkmus-pastiching, but those are the sort of lyrics I like – a collection of (hopefully) striking images and phrases rather than a coherent narrative. No-one listens to lyrics beyond the first verse and the chorus anyway. The chorus refers to a traumatic haircut I once received where the hairdresser maintained eye-contact with me – in the mirror – throughout, seemingly never once looking at my hair/head, and relying on some sort of echo-location to avoid cutting my ears.
Track 5: Persian Regret
The name for this song is taken from the Jutes range of hard-wearing interior paints. The concept (for the song rather than the paint range), is that you (YOU) have just stepped out of a taxi in down-town Addis Ababa and into a club where this music is playing. Full disclosure: I’ve never been to Addis Ababa or listened to any Ethiopian music. Paul made some throat-noises, as this is what he presumes happens in Addis Ababian nightclubs.
Track 6: Borderline
This starts as a charming tale of love thriving in the tedium of low-level espionage, but quickly resolves into gibberish. Quite an unorthodox pronunciation of “archipelago”, but I’m sure Mick Jagger has done worse. After a straight-up American 90s college-rock first half we tried to seamlessly weld a 70s psych-rock outro onto the back like a backstreet mechanic. I enjoyed trying to play guitar like Neil Young, anyway.
Track 7: Plane
Another contender for most-Pavementy-song (an attempt to channel Here from Slanted and Enchanted), this was the first song we wrote as a band, and the last one we recorded. Despite playing it for over two years, 6 songs into the session I experienced some sort of studio-induced dementia and had to do star-jumps in the car park until I could remember how to play it again. Paul (producer and long-time friend and collaborator) reminds me that this is the second time I’ve used the line “sold up and moved to Tibet” in a song, which could tell you something (I’ll plagiarise anything: including myself).
I’m glad there’s some funny guitar halfway through. For me, the worst thing that’s happened in music in the last 20 years is the dominance of self-obsessed earnestness – in indie music and X-factor pop. When people talk to each other, they constantly use irony and humour, but when they pick up a guitar or a microphone they so often rely on po-faced seriousness. Whatever happened to Chuck Berry singing about his ding-a-ling?
The Jutes are:
Robin Wilkinson: guitars, vocals, songs, arrangements Neil Williams: drums, arrangements Adam Rustidge: bass, keys, percussion, production, engineering, mixing Dan Holloway: bass inspiration, arrangements Paul Rustidge: production, engineering, mixing, head of logistics
Recorded at Music Box, Cardiff
Mastered by Charlie Francis at Synergy Mastering
How exciting is this! The brand new Welsh Cheese Company (run by a founding member of the awesome Barry Horns) is launching on Monday! They’ll be selling the very best artisan Welsh cheeses online through their website, working directly with 12 cheese producers, and stocking over 50 cheeses. They’re also doing a subscription service called Clwb Caws and a range of hampers and gift boxes – just in time for Christmas!
Cardiff-based musician Tom Pinder – who plays the sousaphone in Welsh Supporters’ band The Barry Horns and the trombone for world famous performers such as Paolo Nutini – is about to embark on a new adventure after founding The Welsh Cheese Company, an online retailer selling the very best Welsh cheeses. You can check out the produce at www.welshcheesecompany.co.uk, or on Twitter @welshcheeseco.
WHY CHEESE, TOM?
Tom decided to create the company when he realised Welsh cheese doesn’t always get the attention it deserves:
“Over recent years I’ve been getting more and more interested in the sourcing and the quality of the food I eat, and as a non meat-eater I’ve been particularly interested in the dairy side of my diet.
I’ve been eating a wide range of amazing Welsh cheeses from the delis in Cardiff, and local farmers’ markets, but I was frustrated that I couldn’t get all of the Welsh cheeses I’d come to love from one supplier, so I thought I’d do something about that and start a business that would bring together cheese from my 11 or 12 favourite Welsh cheese producers in one place.”
Since founding The Welsh Cheese Company, Tom has enjoyed getting to know the producers behind his favourite varieties. He is now keen to introduce more people all over the UK to these cheeses.
“The producers are so passionate about the cheeses they make, but Welsh cheese often seems to be a bit overlooked somehow. Some of the English cheesemakers are great at publicising themselves, and promoting themselves online, but some in Wales don’t seem to be as well known, despite often being even more critically acclaimed than their English counterparts.”
One of the most important parts of The Welsh Cheese Company’s mission is to tell people the story behind the cheeses it is selling. The website will have lots of information about all of its cheesemakers, and the farms that each cheese comes from:
“We’re working directly with producers, and buying direct from the farm, so we’ll be able to get cheese to the customers in the best possible condition.”
Tom isn’t stopping at cheeses, either: The Welsh Cheese Company will offer a glorious selection of other Welsh produce to compliment its cheeses:
“We’ll be offering a range of hampers and gift boxes, all full over the very best Welsh artisan food and drinks, to suit every budget. From gin to chutney, and from beer to chocolate, there will be something for everyone!”
Meet Tom Pinder, he’s great
The Welsh Cheese Company’s founder Tom Pinder is well known in Wales as a founding member of the Welsh football team’s official supporters’ band, The Barry Horns, but his career in music has taken him on many other adventures, including travelling the world with acclaimed Scottish singer-songwriter Paolo Nutini.
“It’s taken me all around the world,” he says. “The tour of the last Paolo album took us to New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, South Africa, Canada, the USA several times, and most countries in Europe. Our last tour was to South America just a few months ago.” He plans to continue performing with Paolo as much as possible, as well as continuing to play with the Barry Horns at Welsh international football matches too.
“The Barry Horns has been a big part of my life over the past 7 or so years. When we started the band it was just a small group of close friends who had played in Cardiff bands together for years, but it’s grown and grown and been an amazing experience. The Euro finals in France last year were absolutely incredible.”
Tom has been working primarily as a musician ever since finishing his music degree at Cardiff University in 2002.
“During university I was in a couple of bands, and when I graduated I moved into a two bed house with the six other members of one of the bands, and we toured round Europe and the UK for a few years. In 2006 that band came to and end, and I decided I should try to get a proper job. I worked briefly in public affairs in the Bay, and then more music opportunities came along, so I started touring with Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, and then with Paolo Nutini, and that’s been my main job since then really.”
Alongside the touring, Tom also set up a music rehearsal studios business in Cardiff around six years ago, called the Cardiff Arches. That’s still going strong and has been his main preoccupation when he’s not touring. With the new cheese business taking off he will be handing over the running over the studios to colleagues.
“I’m very excited about The Welsh Cheese Company and it’s refreshing to be doing something outside of music – although I remain as passionate about music as ever, and will always continue to play in bands,” he says.
Cardiff Book Festival started off as a fairly modest affair last year, but this year it’s bigger, brighter, and even has its own literary-themed disco! We’ve combed through the programme (the best value ticket is a weekend wristband for £30, btw) and found our picks for the weekend. So get your read on, and let’s go …
Cardiff Book Festival: Where the written word comes alive, aloud, and off the page in the Welsh capital!
Friday 22 – Sunday 24 September, The Angel Hotel, Cardiff
OUR PICKS:
Friday 22 September
Catherine Mayer – Attack of the 50 Ft. Women: How Gender Equality Can Save The World!
7.15 PM – DRAGON SUITE, THE ANGEL HOTEL
Not a single country anywhere in the world has achieved gender equality. In more than a few countries, progress for women has stalled or is reversing. If gender equality promises benefits not just to women, but to everyone, why aren’t we embracing it? And how can we speed the pace of change? In ‘Attack of the 50 Ft. Women’, journalist and co-founder of The Women’s Equality Party Catherine Mayer tackles those questions and many more, sharing inside views and experiences. In her insightful, revelatory, often hilarious, and hugely inspiring book, Catherine Mayer takes us to a place she calls Equalia. What is it like? Does gender equality make for a society that is more equal in other ways too? Who does the low-paid jobs? How does gender express itself in a place freed from gender programming? What’s the sex like? What’s on the telly? (£7 full price, £5 concessions)
Dylan Jones on David Bowie: A Life in conversation with Mike Williams sponsored by Capital Law
8.30PM – DRAGON SUITE, THE ANGEL HOTEL
Dylan Jones is the award-winning editor of GQ magazine, a position he has held since 1999, winning the British Society of Magazine Editors “Editor of the Year” award a record ten times. A former editor at i-D, The Face, Arena, the Observer and the Sunday Times, he is the author of New York Times best sellers on musical heroes including Jim Morrison and Elvis. His new book David Bowie- A Life is an engrossing, magisterial biography unlike any Bowie story ever written. It’s an epic, unforgettable cocktail-party conversation about a man whose enigmatic shapeshifting and irrepressible creativity produced one of the most sprawling, fascinating lives of our time. Drawn from over 180 interviews with friends, rivals, lovers, and collaborators, some of whom have never before spoken about their relationship with Bowie, this oral history weaves a hypnotic spell as it unfolds the story of a remarkable rise to stardom and an unparalleled artistic path. By turns insightful and deliciously gossipy, David Bowie- A Life is as intimate a portrait as may ever be drawn. It sparks with illuminating, never-before-seen material from Bowie himself, drawn from a series of Jones’s interviews with him across two decades. Dylan will be interviewed by Mike Williams, the editor-in-chief of NME, himself a winner of the British Society of Magazine Editors “Editor of the Year” award during his time at Kruger Magazine, which is where I also cut my journalistic teeth. RIP KRUGER. (£7 full price, £5 concessions)
Saturday 23 September
Scientists of Wales/Gwyddonwyr Cymru
1PM – PRINCE OF WALES SUITE, THE ANGEL HOTEL
The University of Wales’ series of books Scientists of Wales/Gwyddonwyr Cymru charts the lives, times and works of Welsh scientists, and of people active in science in Wales. This event will see lively discussion in Welsh and English about Wales’ place on science’s world map, taking in the stories of William Robert Grove, a pioneering researcher who anticipated the general theory of the conservation of energy, and was a pioneer of fuel cell technology and Evan James Williams, whose work included attempting to prove the existence of Hidiki Yukawa’s hypothetical pi mesonparticle, and working on the MDS (magnetic detection of submarines) system to tackle the U-boat menace of World War II. (£5/£3)
35 years of Fighting Fantasy with Ian Livingstone
2.30 PM – DRAGON SUITE, THE ANGEL HOTEL
Ian co-founded iconic games company Games Workshop with Steve Jackson in 1975, launching Dungeons & Dragons in Europe. In 1982, he co-authored The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook in the series which has sold almost 20 million copies worldwide. His best-selling titles include City of Thieves, Forest of Doom and Deathtrap Dungeon, and his new book, The Port of Peril, marks the 35th anniversary of Fighting Fantasy. When serving as Executive Chairman at Eidos, he launched global video games blockbusters including Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Ian has a passionate belief in the power of play as a contextual hub for learning, and he is a leading advocate for the importance of having Computing on the National Curriculum. His book Hacking the Curriculum is an essential guide for teachers to promote creativity, computational thinking and problem solving in the classroom – meta skills for the digital age. He was awarded a BAFTA Special Award in 2002 and a CBE in 2013. Ian will share a reflection on his career before a Q & A session chaired by BBC Radio 1’s Steffan Powell. (£7/£5)
Sanctuary – Refugee writing in Wales
8.15PM – PRINCE OF WALES SUITE, THE ANGEL HOTEL
Eric Ngalle Charles is a poet, dramatist and novelist and a former Cameroon refugee. His first book ‘Asylum’ deals with what it means to be a refugee, caught between two worlds, destitute and unable to move forward with one’s life. He’s joined by others seeking asylum and refuge in Wales whose stories, poetry and essays about their journeys feature the extraordinary histories of the men, women and children who are seeking sanctuary in Wales. (£5/£3)
Sunday 24 September
Merthyr: the crucible of modern Wales? Sponsored by Modern Wales, Parthian
1PM – PRINCE OF WALES SUITE, THE ANGEL HOTEL
Dai Smith interrogates Joe England’s claim that Merthyr was the crucible in the development of Wales in the 19th Century and moving on a century asks why Huw Lewis’s moving memoir of growing up in Aberfan in the 1960s and 1970s, The Skylark’s Song, has so much to say about the past as a foreign country. (£5/3)
How Bullshit Conquered the World with James Ball
2.30 PM – DRAGON SUITE, THE ANGEL HOTEL
2016 marked the birth of the post-truth era. Sophistry and spin have coloured politics since the dawn of time, but two shock events – the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s elevation to US President – heralded a departure into murkier territory. This is the story of bullshit: what’s being spread, who’s spreading it, why it works – and what we can do to tackle it. This is bigger than fake news and bigger than social media. It’s about the slow rise of a political, media and online infrastructure that has devalued truth. The Pulitzer Prize-winning James Ball should know. He’s worked in political, data and investigative journalism in the US and the UK for BuzzFeed, The Guardian and the Washington Post in a career spanning TV, digital, print and alternative media. (£5/£3)
Neil M.C. Sinclair
6.30PM – DRAGON SUITE, THE ANGEL HOTEL
Afro-Celtic author and historian, Neil M.C. Sinclair is a native of Tiger Bay, the oldest multi-ethnic community in Wales. He has written extensively on the history of his unique hometown, a place which is now the subject of the new musical ‘Tiger Bay’, premiering in Cardiff this November. Sinclair’s insider’s view of the area draws on personal memories, family history and a lifetime’s worth of connections within one of Cardiff’s most celebrated communities. Supported by Wales Millennium Centre’s Tiger Bay the Musical, 13th-25th November 2017. (£5/£3)
I think you can take as a testament to quite how good this year’s Green Man was that it’s taken me over a week to get myself together enough to write this review.
If you’re in a rush and just want the headline: Best Green Man yet!
For more: read on!
If you’re not in the Settlers camping, general admission starts at 10am on Thursday. In Green Men past, I’ve always liked to be one of the first people in on a Thursday (gotta make the most of it, right? Also means you get to camp near Orange parking, which makes the get-in and get-out easier) but we were delayed a bit this year, meaning we ended up fenced out of our normal spot, and instead deeper into the camping areas – pretty much right behind the Mountain Stage. Which made our tent-festival-tent commute a staggering five minutes. YAS!
We put the tent up (we indulged in a trolley this year to assist us), had a tent cider, then wandered into the festival. We headed straight for Nature Nurture with swimming cossies, just in case there were any spaces in the hot tubs. And guess what … there totally were! So we splurged the £25, had a lovely shower, and then spent two hours intermittently boiling in hot water and then dunking in the cold plunge pool.
Thursday night was finished off with a viewing of the Ben Wheatley film Free Fire in the Cinedrome (which, judging by the number of napping adults in the tent, also doubles as a grown person creche).
On Friday morning we scrambled out of bed in time to see the Druids of Stonehenge open the festival. This year it was Rollo Maughfling on his todd, and he opened the festival with the traditional series of blessings and group chantings and wishes for peace throughout the world. He did also hope for good weather, but as if by magic, the heavens opened and it poured down during the ceremony.
The rest of Friday was mostly spent pootling around between the Mountain Stage and the Back of Beyond, a relatively new stage for the performing arts. Like many of the people at Green Man, we were with people who had kids in tow. But luckily for all of them, it’s a festival that’s built with families in mind.
You’ll see various families pulling these trolleys around the festival: they’re the same trolleys you can use to help drag all your camping crap in during the set up. You can also rent one out for £25 a day, complete with cushions inside and roof to protect your little ones from the weather.
They were an absolute godsend – like mini pillow forts on wheels. The kids slept, ate, and played in and around them all day – and more importantly, they weren’t as tired and crabby as if they’d been walked around.
Frankly, I was a little jealous that no one was pulling me around in one.
We managed to catch quite a bit of music on Friday. The weather was holding steady, which meant sitting on the floor (or rolling around if you needed to) were still possibilities. On the Mountain Stage we caught Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit (who we’d seen at Green Man a couple of times before – and has never disappointed), and the grungey, slow-roasted rock of US band Lift to Experience, who had on stage with them the biggest Texan flag I have ever seen.
We also enjoyed British Sea Power (who turned the stage into an arboretum for their powerful set).
For the big finale of the night, it was a toss up between Future Islands and Kate Tempest, which split our group. Personally I was in favour of staying in Round the Twist, which was busting out some 80s classics (and had handed out inflatable guitars to everyone for some serious moshing), but plumped instead to head to see Kate Tempest.
And my word, am I glad I did. I’ve never seen her live before, and she performed Let Them Eat Chaos, all the way through. Despite some ill-timed whooping from hammered ravers whenever she mentioned drugs, it was one of the most effective performances I’ve ever seen. I’ve listened to the album before, but there was something incredibly special – raw – vital – about her voice, about the words, about experiencing it live.
When she finished, I was so overwhelmed by it that I couldn’t even clap. We staggered out of the tent and headed to Chai Wallah’s to get a drink.
We headed back for Roni Size – I was hoping that listening to New Forms all the way through might help ease the tension, but the first 20 minutes was some straight jump-up, which I just didn’t have the energy for. We rambled back down the hill and to bed at 2am – a relatively early night – to get ready for Saturday.
Slightly bruised by our late night politics, we spent much of Saturday moving slowly from stage to stage, absorbing music, talks, djing, and many, many pints of Growler, which has now become the festival’s ‘house pint’.
We caught a couple of bands in between moving very slowly, many children in tow between stages: the excellent H.Grimace, who played on the Green Man Rising stage (and very kindly let us use one of their tracks for our video above – thank you Hannah!), folk veteran Shirley Collins, old school rnb revivalist Michael Kiwanuka, experimental disco-punkers Liars (although they were a bit loud for the kids, so we hung outside with Bloody Marys for their set), sludgy garage-rockers Thee Oh Sees.
There was also plenty of food explorations on Saturday – and although the jury’s still out, here are the best eats at Green Man (sorry there are no pics, we ate everything before we had a chance to take photos!):
the Vietnamese place up by Fairy Power (I ate here three times can’t remember the name …!). They had the MOST AMAZING sweet and sour broth, stuffed full of veggies and noodles with pork balls on top … for £8 …
the Roaming Rotisserie chicken place. Half a chicken, stuffing and potatoes for £8.
Strumpets with Crumpets. Just do the blue cheese, jam and bacon one when you’re pissed and on your way back to your tent – and don’t even trip, dog.
So anyway, back to the festival, I guess …
My highlight for the weekend was always the Saturday night … Jon Hopkins into Daniel Avery (be still, my beating techno loop).
And it was, predictably, absolutely amazing. I’ve been a Hopkins fan for years now, and Daniel Avery’s Drone Logic is one of the best dance albums released over the past ten years. Hands down.
Myself and the We Are Cardiff technical futurologist have a fun tradition of waiting until we are the drunkest we can possibly be, and then rugby tackling each other down the between the hill between Chai Wallah’s and the Nature Nurture area. This is us, by the way (during the daytime).
This year was no different, but unlike previous years, we were either not quite drunk enough for this escapade (or far too drunk). So upon waking, I was a bit worried to feel extreme pain all around my ribcage when I moved, or coughed, or just breathed.
We decided to take Sunday a little bit easier. hiding from the rain in alternate locations (mostly between Chai Wallah’s and Far Out), grabbing slices of pizza and pints of Wrexham lager when the weather allowed, and absorbing Actress, Sunflower Bean, Richard Dawson, and Manu Delago.
As Sunday night drew to a close, and the weather drew in, Mountain Stage headliner PJ Harvey took to the main stage. You can hear her performance here on the BBC, and I read a great review of her set (and actually of the festival as a whole in the Quietus) so why not head over there, show them some love, and so I can pull this thing to a close!
My camera always falls to pieces every year when I try and capture the burning of the Green Man, so this year I thought your photos would be better to try and represent the ritual. Earlier in the festival I would check the wishes that were written on tags and tied to the man and dragon combo. They ranged from the fairly standard (I wish I was a fairy, please can I have a pay rise) to more fatalistic (my favourite: everything is fucked).
And maybe it’s just me – but after such a wonderfully rich weekend, with good music, good people, and good booze – was burning all those thoughts that we are troubled with – some sort of opportunity for a new beginning?
Radical ritual, folk hearted celebrations of art, music, literature, and people. This was the best Green Man yet. And I cannot wait to see what they pull out of the bag for next year!
GREEN MAN 2018 EARLY BIRD TICKETS ARE OUT SOON! Make sure you’re following:
Cardiff is slowly but surely becoming street food city, quite literally, and Feast Fest is one of our favourite ventures to be launched this year!
Feast Fest is launching a colourful outdoor ‘feastival’ on Womanby Street, with five weekends of street food, farmers market, music, vintage clothing, vinyl sales, skate competitions, DJs, craft beers, art exhibitions and much more.
The top street food traders in Wales, along with local food producers will be offering kerbside dining every Saturday and Sunday from July 29 to August 26.
Womanby Street is the city’s alternative heartland, just a two-minute stroll from the Castle and five minutes from the central train station. The street has some of the best loved music venues, bars, restaurants, indie shops, tap and ale houses in the city, and is often where we end up after a long night of hard drinking and fast dancing.
The bars and venues will be opening to provide daytime entertainment, craft beers, wines and much more. Award-winning street food chef Jamie O‘Leary of Jols Food Co, who is spearheading the event, said:
“As a chef I’ve grown to love the street food experience – the reward is seeing the customer’s face light up as they watch their meal cooked and handed to them moments later. With ‘Feast Fest’ I intend to put the street food experience back where it should be – on the street. And Womanby Street is such a rich, cultural and vibrant location in the capital – with the recent Save Womanby Street campaign it became apparent that this is a street that the citizens of Cardiff are proud of and therefore an ideal location for a summer-long food market.”
The market will be open at weekends between 12-7pm. Traders appearing on rotation at Feast Fest include Annand George Tuk Tuk, Jols Food Co, Rule of Tum Burgers, Dusty Knuckles Pizza Co, Mr Croquewich, Rackdogs, Shwarmarama, Ffwrnes Pizza, The Bearded Taco, Science Cream, Dixies Vintage Ice creams, The Pork Society, Mighty Soft shell Crab, Shelly’s, EL Chilango and Got Beef.
So I was in my trapeze class yesterday and my lovely teacher Olga said that a photo of me was on Facebook, and it was going to be in a photography book! Intrigued, I reactivated my Facebook account to check it out…
Photo by Craig Kirkwood
In the most Cardiff fashion ever, I was photographed riding my bike through a lovely park, past Bryce Davies’s (aka graffiti artist Peaceful Progress) van. In serendipitous style, Bryce had also recently done my tattoo (you can see it poking out of my right sleeve). If that’s not Cardiff, I’m not sure what is – cycling everywhere, parks, graffiti, everyone knowing everyone and a gorgeous photo of the whole thing.
Anyway, it turns out that the wonderful photographer Craig Kirkwood has gone and made a photography book about Cardiff! It features loads of incredible shots of lots of our friends. It looks really amazing, so we had a chat with him to find out more….
The Book of Cardiff is a hardcover bound portrait of the city told through around 300 stunning photographs taken over a 12-month period.
You can see some of the wonderful shots below, or on the book’s Facebook page.
Foreword to the 1st edition
The Welsh capital is fast becoming one of the great post-industrial cities of Britain. Full of optimism, open spaces, and renewed foreshores, it’s taking its place beside so many urban centres which have emerged, finally, from the collapse of industry, manufacturing and mining that so brutally shook the Kingdom in the 1980s and 90s. It’s also a city that’s changing quickly as the industrial spaces disappear to make way for new retail, commercial and residential projects.
Craig says:
“This book covers about a year in the life of the city. As an expatriate Australian, I don’t pretend to understand the history of Cardiff in any detail. Nor do I have the cultural ties that would give me an informed, insider’s perspective. But I do bring the eye of a resident tourist still delighted with just how pleasant it is to live in a city that can be covered largely by foot or bicycle.
At the time of writing, I’ve lived in Cardiff just over a year. It’s not such a long time really but to delay this book any further would be to miss the opportunity of seeing the town as a fresh outsider.
As a photographer, it’s important to grab that ‘new car feeling’ and breath it in before the sights that seem fascinating become commonplace.”
About the author
Craig Kirkwood is an Australian-born photographer, publisher and entrepreneur. He moved to Cardiff in 2015 and immediately set about documenting both the landscape and the cultural life of the city, taking over 20,000 photographs of hundreds of festivals, events, concerts and everyday life in the city.
Prior to moving to Wales, Craig was the CEO of high- profile creative media consultancy, Fearless Media, which he founded in 1999. At the time, Fearless was the largest organisation of its kind in Australia with offices and facilities throughout the country. He was also a regional manager of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School and founded the renowned Flickerfest International Film Festival on Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach which continues today in its 27th year.
Where to buy and launch party details
The book will be available from Waterstones and many other book and gift shops around town or can be purchased directly from the publisher’s online store http://colourshop.co. The launch party is on Thursday 1 June at Little Man Coffee from 7pm, and our faves Maddie Jones and Sparkles Hoop Troupe will be performing.
Everyone is welcome to attend!
We can’t wait to see the finished book – best of luck Craig!!
I’ve been doing lots of walking and lots of research for this series, and so there’s a lot of stuff I don’t get to publish on CBTR. Luckily for me, the overspill can go here.
Tintern Abbey is just 50 minutes out of Cardiff, but the wooded, mountainous surroundings feel a million miles away from the city. We spent the afternoon testing out a new camera lens, so here’s a little photo blog for you!
The present-day remains are a mixture of building works covering a 400-year period between 1131 and 1536. Very little remains of the first buildings but you will marvel at the vast windows and later decorative details displayed in the walls, doorways and soaring archways….
Photojournalist Chloe Jackson-Nott recently completed a project on women in music in Wales, about the lack of women in the industry and how we can address it. Take it away, Chloe!
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Niamh Doyle and Rebekah Price, presenters on Dragon Radio. All photography by Chloe Jackson-Nott.
My photography mainly focuses on music. There aren’t many female music photographers around, so within my work I wanted to photograph and talk to women in other parts of the music industry: whether that be, in a band, solo artist, radio presenter, photographer or enthusiastic gig-goer.
I found eight young women in different parts of the industry. They all do different things within it, and they agreed to speak to me and allowed me to photograph them.
Firstly, Daniele Lewis is a singer-songwriter from New Quay, West Wales. I stumbled across her at Sŵn Festival when looking through the schedule for female artists. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to speak to her on the day but I did see her perform and she has a lot of friends and family around supporting her. Her performance had a calm vibe to it but at the same time you could see all of her enthusiasm and that she loved being up on stage.
I then spoke to Fenne Lily just before her show at Sŵn Festival in Clwb Ifor Bach who had travelled from Bristol to perform in Cardiff. She has strong views about how to get to where you need to be in the music industry and how you need to fight your way to the top, especially being female.
Before I started to find women to talk to about this, I knew I wanted to speak to Katie Hall from Aberdare as I have worked with and seen her band Chroma play live multiple times. She’s incredible. When she performs, she’s lost in performance – she doesn’t care what other people think about her. She’ll be dancing around the stage, giving enthusiastic facial expressions. You can tell she is very passionate about her music and take advantage of being the lead singer of a band with two other male members. She’s a great role model for young girls who want to make it big one day in music.
I also spoke to Dani Hewitt from Treherbet and Samantha Bull from Aberdare who volunteer with Young Promoters Network where they have worked with many women, including myself, who want to take the next step in music. They realised that all of the girls were coming to them for advice noticing that there were no other female role models for them, so decided to create a community called WOMEN (Women of Music Events Network.)
I then went to the students of all music courses at University of South Wales and found Ellie Strong from Cardiff who aspires to be a successful drummer, which is someone I had yet to come across so jumped at the chance to speak to her. She performs at Café Jazz every Monday to practice her skills and perform to a small crowd. Finally, I was asked to photograph two radio presenters from Dragon Media at University of South Wales who happened to be both female so spoke to them to get a different view as they were not in a band or aspire to be artists.
Women of Wales in music
Samantha Bull, 26, Aberdare, W.O.M.E.N
“There aren’t enough women in the music industry, progress is being made but it is slow. There is so much could be done and must be done to counteract the inequality that we as women face in the industry. From the culture that surrounds us and society it has been ingrained in us from a young age that all girls are in competition with each other. Take that thought and push it out of your brain. We need to come together and start supporting each other and celebrating each other’s achievements.”
Dani Hewitt, 26, Treherbet, W.O.M.E.N Cofounder
“There are a lot of men working in the music industry that I could look up to but not a lot of women that I could identify with and follow in the footsteps of. I volunteer with the Young Promoters Network and a lot of the girls starting coming to me and looking up to me to help them. It became a community where we supported each other with developing skills. As there aren’t a lot of female role models, I decided that I should be one for now for young girls who want to achieve their dreams and goals.”
Samantha Bull, 26, and Dani Hewitt, 26, running a W.O.M.E.N panel (Women of Music Events Network) panel at Swn Festival 2016 to inspire young girls to achieve their dreams in music.
Fenne Lily, 18, Bristol – Singer
“I think there are enough women in the music industry but not women who are actually doing what they want to do, because it’s quite easy to see a girl with an acoustic guitar and tell her she’s can be the next ‘Taylor Swift.’ I think it should cater to women more instead of having men setting up their career and choosing for them. I’ve been brought up by a lot of music as I was attending festivals at a young age so I knew this is definitely what I wanted to do with my life and have decided to build a career out of it. If it’s something you want to do, don’t let society’s opinions stop you.”
Fenne Lily performing downstairs in Clwb Ifor Bach on Saturday 22nd October.
Danielle Lewis, 21, West Wales – Singer
“In the 10 years I have been performing live from school, my local scene at home, playing in Australia to moving to the city in Cardiff, I have seen a lack of women in music in all areas of the industry from playing to sound engineers and producing. It still seems to be a very male orientated business and as a female artist myself I have felt looked down at numerous times. I recently recorded my latest CD with a female producer for the first time and she herself agrees on the shortage. I do think we are becoming more aware of this and I look forward to a new wave of more females in the industry.”
Singer Danielle Lewis, 21, from New Quay, West Wales, performing on the Horizons stage at O’Neils on Saturday 22nd October.
Singer Danielle Lewis, performing on the Horizons stage at O’Neils on Saturday 22nd October.
Katie Hall, 21, Aberdare – Singer
“There are definitely not enough girls in the music industry. It shouldn’t be the defining feature of you band that a girl is the front woman. There are so many talented and inspiring musicians that are girls. I think the way to inspire more girls to work in the music industry is to shatter that glass ceiling that’s oppressing women everywhere. The way we do that is challenging promoters attitudes towards women in bands so they give them more gigs. We need to inspire girls from a young age to get involved or pick up an instrument, and support the women who are currently involved in music to reach their full potential as artist.”
Lead singer of Chroma, Katie Hall, performing in Undertone, Cardiff on Sunday 23rd October.
Lead singer of Chroma, Katie Hall, performing in Undertone, Cardiff on Sunday 23rd October.
Ellie Strong, 20, Cardiff – Drummer
“I think there’s a common misconception that there aren’t a lot of women, but there are plenty of women in music; just not enough making grungy rock and shredding guitar! But then there are some gems like jazz and rock drummer Cindy Blackman, currently killing it in the band Santana.. I think what the current women in the industry need to realise is that ‘music’ isn’t a term to be taken lightly; it’s not always about image, which seems to be the case nowadays. So my advice to singers is that they should listen to Jill Scott’s raw vocals instead of whatever is in the charts, and to instrumentalists – keep doing your thing. Prove that we can do it just as well as the boys.”
Niamh Doyle, 20, Cardiff, Radio Presenter
“I believe that there are a few women who are extremely big at the moment, but that’s only a fortunate few. The advice I would give is to keep up their YouTube platforms, as this is a platform where anyone; gender, age, or race is welcome and as it is such a large platform, it is accessible to everyone around the world. We are also at a time in our lives where society is beginning to change the status levels between men and women; women are beginning to become more noticed and taken seriously. My final advice to women would be to never give up and to just keep their end goal in mind.”
Niamh Doyle, 20, student at USW and radio presenter at Dragon Media
Rebekah Price, 22, Cwmbran, Radio Presenter
“Music is an incredibly important thing in my life. I’ve always loved talking about it, listening to it, as well as making it. But I will admit that there has been times where I have stood back and questioned whether realistically, as a woman, I would be able to move forward in the industry. Negative thinking I know, but this was partly because I’d recently become aware of the gender divide within music festivals. When we look at festivals in particular, which essentially provide a platform for a large collection of artists and musicians, we can see that typically there is only a small percentage of female acts being seen.”
Rebekah (CORR) Price, 22, student at USW and radio presenter at Dragon Media.
We had an absolute blast at this year’s Sŵn. Photojournalist Chloe Jackson-Nott was out and about capturing the bands and the vibe for us …
Drummer of Himalayas, James Goulborn performing in Moon Club at Swn Festival on Saturday 22nd October 2016.Lead singer of Himalayas, Joseph Williams, performing in Moon Club, Cardiff on Saturday 22nd October.Bassist of Himalayas, Louis Heaps, performing in Moon Club, Cardiff on Saturday 22nd October.Bassist of Himalayas, Louis Heaps, performing in Moon Club, Cardiff on Saturday 22nd October.Ellie James commonly known as Ellie Makes Music, performing downstairs in Clwb Ifor Bach on Saturday 22nd October.Ellie James commonly known as Ellie Makes Music, performing downstairs in Clwb Ifor Bach on Saturday 22nd October.
Fenny Lily performing downstairs in Clwb Ifor Bach on Saturday 22nd October.Lead singer of Max Raptor, Will Ray performing in Tramshed, Cardiff on Saturday 22nd October.Drummer of Max Raptor, Pete Reisner performing in Tramshed, Cardiff on Saturday 22nd October.Lead singer of Max Raptor, Will Ray performing in Tramshed, Cardiff on Saturday 22nd October.Lead singer of Max Raptor, Will Ray performing in Tramshed, Cardiff on Saturday 22nd October.Lead singer of Max Raptor, Will Ray performing in Tramshed, Cardiff on Saturday 22nd October.Lead singer of Max Raptor, Will Ray performing in Tramshed, Cardiff on Saturday 22nd October.Lead singer of Max Raptor, Will Ray performing in Tramshed, Cardiff on Saturday 22nd October.Lead singer of Max Raptor, Will Ray performing in Tramshed, Cardiff on Saturday 22nd October.Lead singer and guitarist of Black Foxxes, Mark Holley, performing in Tramshed, Cardiff on Saturday 22nd October.Lead singer and guitarist of Black Foxxes, Mark Holley, performing in Tramshed, Cardiff on Saturday 22nd October.Lead singer and guitarist of Black Foxxes, Mark Holley, performing in Tramshed, Cardiff on Saturday 22nd October.
Lead singer and guitarist of Black Foxxes, Mark Holley, performing in Tramshed, Cardiff on Saturday 22nd October.Singer Danielle Lewis, performing on the Horizons stage at O’Neils on Saturday 22nd October.Singer Danielle Lewis, performing on the Horizons stage at O’Neils on Saturday 22nd October.Singer Danielle Lewis, performing on the Horizons stage at O’Neils on Saturday 22nd October.Singer Danielle Lewis, performing on the Horizons stage at O’Neils on Saturday 22nd October.
Young Promoters Network working their own stage at Undertone on Sunday 23rd October.
Singer Vince Jones performing on the Young Promoters Network in Undertone on Sunday 23rd October.
Members of Chroma, Zac Mather, Katie Hall and Liam Bevan posing outside Undertone on Sunday 23rd October.Members of Chroma, Zac Mather, Katie Hall and Liam Bevan posing outside Undertone on Sunday 23rd October.Lead singer of Chroma, Katie Hall, performing in Undertone, Cardiff on Sunday 23rd October.Lead singer of Chroma, Katie Hall, performing in Undertone, Cardiff on Sunday 23rd October.Drummer of Chroma, Zac Mather, performing in Undertone, Cardiff on Sunday 23rd October.Lead singer of Chroma, Katie Hall, performing in Undertone, Cardiff on Sunday 23rd October.Bassist of Chroma, Liam Bevan, performing in Undertone, Cardiff on Sunday 23rd October.Lead singer of Chroma, Katie Hall, performing in Undertone, Cardiff on Sunday 23rd October.
Now in its 13th year, the Big Lottery Fund, ITV Wales and The National Lottery are teaming up to give the public a chance to decide how National Lottery funding should be put to good use in their local area.
Fancy getting involved with their work?
We Are Cardiff 