Who Gets to Build Culture? Lessons from the Sounding Board
In 2018, Common/Wealth decided to take on a second home in Cardiff — the home city of Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director Rhiannon. As luck would have it, a space became available in a newly transformed pub, reimagined as a community asset building.
Our office sits on a street where Rhiannon’s parents once had their first council house. It sits across three interconnected housing estates — the same place our Co-Artistic Director and Community Producer come from and still live. And like many council estates across the UK, it has long been overlooked by cultural investment and opportunities.
When we set up we knew that for Common/Wealth to be of use, and to matter to people, the community would need to feel connected and part of it. We knew that it had to belong to them as much as it belongs to us. We wanted to build something meaningful, so we created the Sounding Board — a group of working-class people who wanted to change things.
At its height, the Sounding Board brought together 12 people from across South Wales, from St Mellons to Blackwood. It included retired union reps, musicians, mums, bakers — people with lived experience, perspective, and power. The aim was to build a community that could shape work locally, while also influencing what we do as a company more widely. They quickly became part of our DNA.
What We Built Together
Over the years, we’ve done incredible things together.
We created Payday Party and took it to the Edinburgh Fringe as part of the Arts Council Wales Welsh Showcase. Members of the Sounding Board spoke on stage at the Co-Creating Change Network at Battersea Arts Centre. Together, we delivered Posh Club — making sure our community’s elders were supported, celebrated, and properly spoiled. Members of our Sounding Board were central to the development of Demand the Impossible — shaping the storytelling, contributing to its digital elements, and, for some, performing for the very first time.
And beyond the “big moments,” there were countless smaller ones that meant just as much.
Jude standing on stage in Edinburgh, telling everyone about the perils of Primark pound pants. David sharing his poetry publicly for the first time. Nicki, speaking with so much passion in front of a room full of funders, charming the pants off them. The group invited an international superstar artist to paint a mural in St Mellons — and made it happen. Because they were brave enough to ask: why not?
Now, that mural stands as something permanent. Something beautiful. Something that speaks beyond our time together.
More Than a Name
If you went by the name alone, you might think the Sounding Board were simply there just to listen and advise us. They were so much more. In fact, we probably got the name wrong from the start. They were active, present — shaping, making and pushing. Not just responding to ideas, but an essential part of making it all happen.
Across the years, we’ve returned to the question of naming—what language best explains what the Sounding Board is and does. At one point, we came close to calling it The Commons. The name emerged from a Sounding Board meeting organically and felt quite on point with what it was all about.
We love the idea of commoning as a practice and as a concept. For us, commoning speaks to the possibility of the arts not as a commodity to be owned or consumed, but as a shared resource: collectively shaped, and rooted in place for people.
To think about commoning in East Cardiff is to ask a different question about how culture works—how it’s funded, who gets to activate it, and how it exists for working-class communities like ours. Commoning, at its core, is about shared resources—the commons—which are created, managed, and sustained through collectivity, the arts as shared wealth. While we didn’t take on the name The Commons, the thinking behind it continues to underpin us and our community around the work. For Common/Wealth it’s a quiet anchor—guiding how we come together, how we listen, and how we imagine culture. Drawing on Raymond Williams’ idea that “culture is ordinary,” we’re interested in what it means to truly live that out, and how we support the conditions for culture to be part of all our lives.
What’s Next
For now, we’ve decided to close this iteration of the Sounding Board.
Our work in Cardiff, alongside our collectives in Bradford, has pushed us to think a bit differently. We’re now bringing that learning together to create a new, company-wide structure — one that connects both cities and supports our communities in new ways.
We’ll be sharing more about this soon. So keep your eyes peeled.
And to everyone who has been part of the Sounding Board — Hayat, Steph, Dave, Yassmein, Nel, Isaac, Justin, Nicky, Charlene, Charlie, Callum, Jesse, Lisa, Poppy, Clint, Janine, Jude, Sherrell, Eridan — thank you.
We’ve loved building the movement with you and although we won’t be gathering formally for a while, we’ll always have the kettle on and the biscuits ready.
Written by Rhiannon White and Chantal Williams
