Earlier this year the UK Government announced that £220 million from the Community Renewal Fund would be awarded to over 400 projects across the UK to prepare for the introduction of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. It contributes to the so-called ‘levelling up’ agenda and one of the successful projects is the Creative Industries Training Programme in Merthyr Tydfil borough – aka Creu Cyffro – delivered by Wellbeing Merthyr out of the historic Redhouse.
The Redhouse is an arts and creative industries centre situated in Merthyr’s Grade II* listed Old Town Hall overlooking Dic Penderyn Square.
Creu Cyffro brings together ten partners including Community Music Wales, Wales Millennium Centre, the Open University and Screen Alliance Wales over a six month period to provide a programme of training activities hosted by venues in the borough such as Theatr Soar, The College Merthyr Tydfil, The Bothy at Cyfarthfa Park, the Creative Clinic in Gurnos, as well as Redhouse itself.
Other delivery partners include Beacon Bees, community radio station GTFM, local author and playwright Anthony ‘Bunko’ Griffiths, theatre company Puppet Soup, and First Campus.
What are we doing?
Grow Social Capital has been appointed to the evaluation team along with Straeon Research Ltd. Our Russell Todd will be supporting Ellie Farmahan and Eva Elliott from Straeon to demonstrate the impact Creu Cyffro has on individuals who are looking to make their way in the creative industries from behind the curtain, who simply want to unleash their inner creativity, and in the broader context of renewal and economy in the Merthyr area.
Given Creu Cyffro is a creative programme, we decided to design the evaluation in the same spirit and so it draws on creative methodologies that will embed the researchers in the activities themselves. One of the outputs is a podcast channel which Russell is producing and which has just released its first episodes. So far there is only English language content on the channel but there will be Welsh language content before too long.
Social capital and the arts
The arts and creative activity are intrinsic to social capital. Think of a live music event that you have attended in the past. It is a communal activity that brings people together to share in a common experience. Within the audience was probably lots of people who shared with you an interest in that band or, at least, genre of music, and who were perhaps dressed like you and were a similar age.
In this way live music has long been an effective way of re-enforcing bonding social capital where people from a particular ‘scene’ – punks, ravers, metalheads, opera lovers – can revel in not only their shared passion for a genre, but also express that scene’s its fashions, hairstyles and other customs and motifs.
Where different genres of music come together – or where different forms of cultural expression such as music, literature, comedy, dance, and crafts are in each other’s orbit – at festivals, such as the Merthyr Rising festival, they can help build our bridging social capital i.e., those bonds between people who are unlike ourselves. Those people whose fashions and tastes are different to our own.
Sociologist Eric Klinenberg coined the term ‘social infrastructure’ for those physical places and organizations that shape our social interactions. By his own admission Klinenberg’s definition of social infrastructure is “capacious”, to include subways, allotments, and park benches. But spaces which are home to creativity, or can be utilised in imaginative ways to be so used, are also excellent incubators of social capital.
This is why for a disadvantaged community like Gurnos the Creative Clinic is such an important facility. Not for one second would we suggest that facilities such as the local club, the shopping parade or Gurnos’ green spaces are not locations for cultural expression, nor are they used for creative purposes. But poverty, disadvantage and external stigma can hinder people’s engagement with those locations where other forms of cultural and creative expression can be experienced.
The evaluation is still in its early days but it’s been a lot of fun so far. It will be fascinating too to observe some of these social capital musings up close.
For more information about the Creu Cyffro podcast contact us on [email protected] or for more information about how you can use creative methodologies in your work or in your organisation contact Ellie Farmhan from Straeon Research on [email protected].
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