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Dateline: 29th March, 2006
Interim ACW Chair Appointed Professor Dai Smith has been appointed interim Chair of the Arts Council of Wales (ACW) to lead the organisation through the review of the Council's role and funding arrangements. Culture Minister Alun Pugh announced the appointment in a statement to a Plenary session of the Welsh Assembly on Tuesday, 28th March, as part of an announcement on the Terms of Reference for the Review of the Arts Council. The Minister also announced that the Chair of the Review Panel will be Elan Closs Stephens, Professor of Communications and Creative Industries at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and outgoing Chair of S4C. Other members of the Review panel will be announced before the Easter recess. The Culture Minister said, "I am very pleased that Professor Dai Smith will take on the role of interim Chair until the process to appoint a full-term Chair has been completed. As holder of the Raymond Williams Chair in Cultural History at Swansea, Professor Smith is not only a distinguished cultural historian he also has a huge enthusiasm for the arts and is eminently suited to carry out this role. "The role of the Chair is critical in ensuring good governance of the Arts Council. As a charity, ACW members are also trustees and have fiduciary responsibilities to take into account. Under the Royal Charter, I have a responsibility to appoint the Chair. Because of the impending Review, an interim arrangement is needed until the way forward is clear for starting the full appointment process." Professor Dai Smith said, "Art, in all its forms, is the prime expression of the culture and society of Wales. We are now at the start of a vital process of review into the future of arts provision for all the people of Wales and the Arts Council must be the catalyst for a debate stripped of emotion and personalities. As a long-standing member of the Council, I have accepted the role of interim Chair to help facilitate that debate and lead the Council's considered response." Explaining to the Western Mail why he had decided to accept the post, Prof Smith said, "I got a call from the minister, who discussed with me some of the options facing the Arts Council, and I said, 'what now?' He said it was likely that they would send in somebody to manage the council as the chair. I had said on the Friday (see below) at the council that that was the worst possible outcome for the council's role in the review. Our position as council members was, what then do we become? - adrift. He (Mr Pugh) said there is an alternative, which is that you could think of becoming an interim chair. "He said that given the circumstances, an interim chair could be expected to hold the council together during the process of review, and at the end of that process then the full position would go to advert and public appointment. The amount of time I would spend on that would be less than a full-time chair." On Friday 24th March the entire ACW board passed a resolution calling for former chair, Geraint Talfan Davies, who had been effectively sacked by the culture minister, to remain in post until the completion of the review, and on 28th Plaid Cymru's shadow culture minister Owen John Thomas told the Western Mail, "I have been informed that the Culture Minister and First MinisterRhodri Morgan met with three ACW board members and asked them to nominate a council member for the position of vice chair. They refused, having no wish to be part of the Government's plans to circumvent the appropriate appointments process. Furthermore, the Culture Minister and First Minister made an informal offer to a member of the Arts Council to become vice chair. The individual was told that an acceptance of their proposal would be the first step to becoming temporary chair. He declined the offer, stating that it would undermine his credibility among other council members. "In my view," he went on, "both approaches to the council members and to the individual breached the Code of Practice for Public Appointments which stipulates that nominations for such posts should be made in writing." Professor Dai Smith is the Raymond Williams Chair in Cultural History within CREW (Centre for Research in to the English Literature and Language of Wales) which he joined in March 2005. He was Professor in the History of Wales at Cardiff University 1985 to 1992 and Editor BBC Radio Wales and Head of Programmes (English language) at BBC Wales from 1992 to 2001 when he was appointed Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Glamorgan. He has also been a Simon Senior Fellow at the University of Manchester and a visiting lecturer at Universities in Germany, Holland, France, Spain, Denmark, Ireland and England. He is now Series Editor of the Welsh Assembly Government’s Library of Wales for classic works written in English from or about Wales. As always, we are grateful to the Theatre in Wales website for the information given here. Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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