In 2016 I got a call from a theatre director.
“I’ve fallen in love with a theatre on a hill.
But it’s falling apart. Literally.
I think I want to help fix it. Am I crazy?”
And yes, she did go on to help fix it. And yes, she probably was crazy, because championing a major capital development of this scale over a long period of time requires such a unique combination of hope, trust and belligerent tenacity it would make anyone question their sanity. But eight years later and I’m stood high up inside her theatre on a hill, and it’s a building site so I’ve got a hard hat on, and there are puddles and the sound of dripping water all around me and there are no walls and it’s absolutely amazing.
The sunlight is streaming through the huge timber frames which will support the new foyer structure. I can look out over the front of the building and see the new entrance, warm and welcoming; come in – this belongs to you – join in! There will be a play area, garden, spaces to dream, create and to have fun. For the first time there will be dedicated facilities for Theatr Clwyd’s award-winning youth, arts and health programmes. The enormous potential of this new building to change people’s lives is tangible, you can really feel it.
I’m here today to meet a group of artists, because following that phone call back in 2016 I fell in love with this theatre on a hill too. Now my studio is working with the remarkable and dedicated team at Theatr Clwyd led by Liam Evans-Ford (Executive Director) and Kate Wasserberg (Artistic Director) and the project architects, Haworth Tompkins, to develop a public art strategy and commission artwork for the new building.
Community, Sustainability and Joy
Our mission is to create an inclusive and inspirational home for Theatr Clwyd communities through a series of permanent and temporary public art commissions. We want to fill the whole building with artists, and there will be opportunities for ceramicists, painters, installation designers, musicians, writers, poets and textile artists to come together and work with the community through an ambitious range of projects. Our public art strategy is driven by three themes for the new building; community, sustainability and joy, all of which sit at the centre of what drives this building, organisation and team. The building will also be a centre of excellence, a beacon for world-class public art.
From the start of the project we wanted artists to be at the heart of the decision making process as the plans for the new building were coming together, and we created an Artist Research Residency through which two artists – Manon Awst and Jessica Lloyd Jones – were embedded into the architectural design process at RIBA Stage 4. Their contribution has been integral to the design of the new building through input on material choices and key architectural decisions.
New Voices
We have a PHD student, Emma Preece, collaborating with us to document and help shape the commissioning process we are developing. Theatr Clwyd is a unique building in the way it provides a platform for world-class performance alongside music, art, health and wellbeing. Our commissioning process must be equally innovative and ambitious to successfully complement the variety of work that happens at Theatr Clwyd every day. We are working with Emma to create a unique blueprint for public art commissioning which we hope will be used to inspire future public art projects.
We wanted to open our doors to everyone, so we held three Open Call opportunities which were open to any artist from any discipline, from anywhere in the World. We had 123 submissions for our three Open Call opportunities, which was an unprecedented level of interest and speaks to the sense of excitement this project has generated. We’ll be announcing the winners of those commissions very soon.
In the meantime, I am standing in my hard hat, introducing a group of artists who have never been here before to the joy of Theatr Clwyd. They already understand how important this building is to so many people and are ready to be part of the vision for its future.
Who knows, maybe in time they will also fall in love with this theatre on a hill?