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Dateline: 10th February, 2008
Dawns Dyfed Loses Funding Dawns Dyfed, Wales Wales' community dance company based in Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion , is to lose its funding from the Arts Council of Wales. Company chair Euros Lewis said, "This about turn in our relationship with the Arts Council has come out of the blue. Our annual review meetings and project assessments have always highlighted our innovative work in the wide range of communities that we serve, heaping particular praise on our achievements with children, young people and the disadvantaged across the three counties. Having been frequently used as a model of best practice by ACW themselves, it is very puzzling that a company with such a successful profile is suddenly deemed to be surplus to their requirements." Established in 1989, the company set about developing a meaningful working partnership with the economic and culturally crisis-torn communities of West Wales. Overseeing the project was the late Cliff McLucas, whose Cwmni Brith Gof suffered a similar fate at the hands of the council ten years ago. "It is very difficult not to see a political pattern emerging here," said Euros, "particularly when you recognize that McLucas’ Brith Gof was feted by ACW until it made the predominantly Welsh-speaking communities of the west its basis for artistic enquiry. Dawns Dyfed has recently completed a three-year long project that aimed to give the vulnerable hill-farming communities of north Carmarthenshire a voice denied to them by their political and cultural invisibility. The project was spectacularly successful. However, no Arts Council officer saw any formative or performance stage of it." When asked about the fact that no ACW officers actually come to see the work being done, Margaret Ames, Dawns Dyfed’s Artistic Director, suggested that two factors might be at work. "In the first place,’ she said, ‘ACW’s regional offices have been demoted. I feel sorry for our Carmarthen based colleagues. They have no voice in the Cardiff-only decision making. Secondly, amongst principal arts officers in Cardiff, there are currently no Welsh-speakers, and as much of what we do is, naturally, reflective of the indigenous Welsh-speaking culture, it seems that our work in these communities has become as invisible as the communities themselves. "What is particularly perplexing is the much commented upon fact that ACW’s management team have not included its Senior Dance Officer in this decision process. Indeed, there is room to believe that she has been actively excluded. That fact, along with the body’s refusal to comply with a Freedom of Information request made by Dawns Dyfed and Regional A.M. Nerys Evans for the release of all documentation surrounding its decision, leads us to the inevitable conclusion that there is a hidden agenda at work, one that seems to have either political or personal motives." As ACW funding accounts for slightly less than 50% of Dawns Dyfed’s income, the company’s board of management will be looking to see whether a new business plan can be drawn up that will allow its three community dance specialists to carry on building upon the solid base of trust and commitment that has evolved through embedded work over the years. "ACW’s decision goes against the grain of community empowerment that is at last beginning to take root in the west of Wales," added Euros." From the English-speaking south of Pembrokeshire to the mixed language communities that is the new norm in Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire, local people are beginning to use their culture as a source of inspiration for creative thinking that provides a long-term basis for sustainable development. ACW officers’ colonial style central planning and control seems very much past its sell-by date."
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