Pride in Diversity
The Cardiff – Pride in Diversity project focused around a series of artist-facilitated workshops enabling BME participants and other individuals from diverse backgrounds to use photography and interactive digital media creatively, to articulate their ideas on identity, place, religion and personal values, within the context of life in Cardiff, and exploring the culturally diverse nature of the city. The project was designed to help young people develop local knowledge and understanding of issues - political, historic, social and cultural, as well as to look at the evolution of the City of Cardiff within an international perspective.
It was also about developing skills and encouraging knowledge transfer within BME communities, both through the support and facilitation Ffotogallery offers young adult participants, and also through their interaction with Russian artist in residence Jana Romanova, The Caravan Gallery and visiting Indian artists Anshika Varma, Sunil Gupta and Charan Singh. We also had two three month paid internships for BME individuals, Arnaldo James and Ayu Baker, working on exhibitions and accompanying workshops and events. Michal Iwanowski and BME intern Arnaldo James led participatory workshops and engaged creative participants and audiences from two Communities First areas, resulting in community events, pop-up exhibitions and the presentation of work during Cardiff Contemporary and Iris Film Festival 2016. Ayu Baker was involved in the installation of the Kanu’s Gandhi exhibition and ran community based workshops and events responding to the themes, to mark the 70th anniversary of Indian Independence.
The Caravan Gallery returned to Cardiff for the project, based in Splott, but presented the Cardiff Pride of Place exhibitions in their mobile gallery reflecting the new work produced through the project, along with a launch of the Cardiff Pride of Place book outside the Wales Millennium Centre.
Project Objectives
To provide and opportunity for creative participation and expression for adults and young people of culturally diverse backgrounds who often feel excluded from and under-represented in mainstream arts and cultural activity in the city
To bring together different culturally diverse groups within the community and to enable participants to articulate their own individual and community identity within the context of Cardiff’s recent history and emerging contemporary identity as an international city
To enable participants to gain confidence and positive self-esteem through creatively producing new work, developing photography and media skills and sharing the work produced with an audience.
To increase community wellbeing and self-confidence through producing high quality work and sharing it with local audiences, as well as visitors to Cardiff
Project Outcomes
We delivered 10 participatory workshop sessions with overall 54 adults and 68 young people participating through the creation of new work.
We delivered 12 exhibition days with an audience of 2360 people
We delivered 6 community events to share and celebrate the project with an audience of 230
Over 5000 people viewed the project online
An immediate legacy is the new very positive relationship developed with The Sustainable Studio in Grangetown, which hosted workshops, volunteering opportunities, exhibitions and events and subsequently became a major partner for Diffusion: Cardiff International Festival of Photography 2017. Over 30 young people from the target areas who participated in the project subsequently became Diffusion volunteers and were able to extend their creative skills and work experience further.
Pride in Diversity was supported by Cardiff Council under their Cultural Projects Scheme 2016/17.
David Drake, Director, Ffotogallery
April 2017
