Our first year as a Portfolio Organisation in Wales

In 2024 Common/Wealth entered the national portfolio of arts organisations funded by Arts Council of Wales for the first time. Although the Investment Review process was tough for a lot of our friends, we were so pleased to be recognised for the work we do with working-class communities. We’ve been so buzzing to get started that we’ve not taken our foot off the gas since! Now it’s time to take a breather to reflect on our first year as a portfolio organisation. We can’t include everything we’ve been up to, but here are some highlights.

We continued to produce work from our home in East Cardiff, but we also visited other places to share, make and learn. We developed relationships, and fostered new ones, and we look forward to new collaborations and partnerships with people like Gob Squad in Berlin and The Corn Exchange in Newport.

One of the things we’ve been most excited about this year is our new show, How To Build A Town. We worked with writer Patrick Jones to interview local residents and produced a piece inspired by their testimony. The result was powerful, Patrick’s writing moved fluidly between topics such as Islamophobia, obstructive bureaucrats, and the beauty of the stars. How to Build a Town brought together residents with key decision makers, and allowed people to have open conversations about the sort of neighbourhood we want to create. We’re continuing to talk with a range of people about developing this piece further, to be performed in different types of communities.

Posh Club continues to be one of our most anticipated shows. In December we needed to add a second date to meet the needs of our community! We love our passionate and committed audience – and we love bringing talented and diverse acts to the heart of East Cardiff. We’ve had everything from bilingual mash-ups to spoken word poetry; comedy calypso to self-stapling burlesque! 66% of the audience are from the CF3 postcode (St Mellons, Trowbridge, Rumney and Llanrumney.) We know that people in these communities often feel overlooked and underserved, and it’s such a pleasure to host a really wonderful party and spoil our guests.
Earlier this year we launched our short film, We No Longer Talk, which asks what it means to be Welsh and not speak the language. This film has sparked many important conversations, and can be watched for free on our website. As a result of We No Longer Talk, we have launched a free Welsh language book club in Llanrumney Hall, where we read books aimed at Welsh learners and help each other understand them.

We piloted our new arts & activism programme for working-class young people, Take Your Place. We reached 29 young people from Cardiff’s Southern Arc. Take Your Place encouraged young people to use their voices to challenge the current systems. Our sessions were led by Amira Hayat & Fahadi Muluku with incredible visiting artists Ibby Abdi, Bianca Ali, Sundas Raza and others.

We also supported two East Cardiff residents in receiving micro-grants from Centric Lab, which aims to raise awareness about health injustice. We’re holding a supper as part of our Nourish season to discuss Centric Lab’s work and allow people to share how they feel about their own relationship with their bodies. We’ll be meeting in candlelight and eating food which allows us to nourish and spoil our bodies.

At the moment we are working towards our new large-scale show, which will take place in Autumn 2025. We’re investigating police infiltration into activist groups, inspired by the work of people like Tom Fowler. Our new show is dynamic and ambitious, with live music and immersive creative technology. We held two R&D phases over the summer with our performers and other creatives to explore these themes and begin to shape the show.

In January 2025 we launched our free workshop series called Nourish. We designed these workshops to encourage people to try something new and nourish themselves in January, which can traditionally be a time for austerity and self-denial.

Our Co-Artistic Director, Rhiannon White, has been working on the final drafts of our first book: Do It Yourself, Making Political Theatre. This book has been developed with our team in Bradford, and also features writing by other creatives that we’ve worked with.

We have collaborated with a number of freelance artists, and hired Rachel Dawson as our part-time Communications Associate. We’ve welcomed Fahadi Mukulu as a Trustee and Jesse, Hayat and Janine as Sounding Board members. They’re all local people with a passion for the arts and making things happen in our community. Our Sounding Board continues to be brilliant, the members recently attended a session with the Working Class Climate Alliance and joined a workshop with Berlin-based Gob Squad.

In our office, Rachel secured a bursary to attend the Arts Marketing Association conference in London, and successfully applied for mentoring from AM as part of their Digital Journey Mentoring project. Producer Camilla has been progressing really well in her aim to learn Welsh, including attending a week-long residential course. Rhiannon has spoken on a number of panels, including at the British Council and at the screening of the Spycops film at Chapter Arts Centre. Our Community Producer, Chantal, has attended a week-long leadership training course, and delivered an online talk with the Wales Wide Training Programme.

It’s been quite a six months – and the best is yet to come!