Call out to promoters, venues, & festivals to join new network

Dathliad Cymru-Affrica is our ambitious and exciting pan-Wales collaboration project – which has been successful in securing Arts Council of Wales Connect & Flourish funding. Our partners on this project are: Neuadd Ogwen (arts centre in Bethesda, Gwynedd), BACA (Butetown Arts and Culture Association, responsible for Butetown Carnival) and Rahim El Habachi (LQBT+ arts consultant, campaigner, and practitioner).

This two-year project aims to bring together artists, promoters/venues, and audiences to celebrate and appreciate the arts of African practitioners and the African diaspora in Wales by developing a multi-venue Wales-Africa festival and a network/circuit of venues, promoters, events, and festivals interested in programming African arts.

We piloted a festival concept in August 2022 where we invited Guinean group Troupe Djeliguinet to perform at a one-day festival event in partnership with The Welfare, Ystradgynlais, and to deliver performances and workshops at Butetown Carnival, Celtic Deaf Festival, Green Man, Eisteddfod Genedlaethol, Ara Deg, and Pride Cymru. We are now planning for a second Dathliad Cymru-Affrica Festival project in 2023 to take place across two-locations (Bethesda and Cardiff) across two weekends in June.  In the lead up to the festival (and to follow) we are planning year-round community participatory workshops (African dance, drumming, storytelling and spoken word) around Wales plus the development of new musical collaborations between African diaspora artists based in Wales with Welsh artists.

There are many barriers to bringing artists from Africa to the UK (costs, visa turnaround times, and processing difficulties), and this is one of the reasons that as part of our Dathliad Cymru-Affrica project we are bringing together promoters, venues, festivals in the form of a circuit/network to enable more scheduling of high quality African arts from Africa, Europe, and from across the UK.

Being part of the circuit/network will:

  • Give you access to artists that others are already bringing to the UK, enabling you to schedule acts you might not usually have access to
  • If you want to tour an African artist but the costs involved are not financially viable (visas, flights, accommodation etc.) you can reach out to the Dathliad Cymru-Affrica network and collaborate with others to spread the costs
  • You will have access to exciting African diaspora arts based in the UK as well as emerging young artists

All you need to do is email Naomi Reid, our Project Manager: naomi@successors.co.uk to say you would like to be part of the circuit/network and we will share any upcoming news and opportunities with you, and please also let us know if you have any ideas or information you would like to share that would be relevant to the network.  We will create a list of network members and only share this with others in the network if you agree to be a participant.  We will also send out an invite to a private group on LinkedIn and Facebook for ease of communication and information sharing.

Please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any questions or require more information.