Monthly Archives: June 2012

The People

“I can’t imagine living anywhere else” – Matt

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I didn’t really know Cardiff despite growing up only half and hour away in Pontypool. I don’t remember coming here as a child apart from the odd Christmas shopping trip. I was well into my thirties before anyone took me to Roath Park.

Newport became the usual night out of choice for most of my friends, but there was a small group of us who’d stay on the train. Safer in Cardiff, quieter than Newport and more exciting – our first taste of Brains in the Park Vaults followed by the Philharmonic and chicken curry off the bone. Or long days in the Old Arcade to watch the rugby before missing the train home.

Cardiff was abuzz by the time I got back from a uni stint up north and started working here in 1996. You couldn’t pick up a paper without reading ‘the eyes of the world will be on Cardiff’ for something or other. There was a palpable air of anticipation about the city.

We had European Summits, referenda, a barrage and our first five star hotel, the Millennium Stadium and Centre, a Rugby World Cup, FA Cups, water taxis and cranes everywhere. It felt like just as one major event finished, another was revealed. Even London newspapers proclaimed Cymru was Cool – no need to tell us, we were living it.

It also awakened my Welshness. It was not something I’d been conscious of growing up in the Eastern Valley and I didn’t hear the language in daily use until I worked in Cardiff. But there was so much to be proud of from the city and the nation. I was signed up to Welsh lessons within the year.

This excitement of being in a city on the rise was what I loved about it, what made me want to live in the thick of it as 99 became 00.

I moved into my first Cardiff flat in the first week of the new millennium. Three storeys above High Street, I saw the city transformed in five years.

I had a bird’s eye view of the city. It was the explosion of St Mary Street – of minibuses decanting already drunks at the top end so they can work their way down towards the train home at the bottom. I’ve seen women fighting in their WRU pants and shop doorways used for everything you can imagine. And I’ve suffered through raging hangovers as a full military band – complete with goat – troops past at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning.

Then there were whole nights, sitting out on the roof of the building with best friends, laughing until the sun came up with a soundtrack of sirens, singing drunks and Cardiff Castle’s peacocks. All the while drinking so much rum that we couldn’t climb back down and through the window to get back into the flat.

I lived in an area not much bigger than a couple of hundred square metres for years – flat on High Street, office on the Hayes, more than enough proper old pubs in between, Cardiff Market and the arcades for shopping.  I’d go three weeks without needing to get in a car.

One of the best parts of it was discovering the lively little community that shares that area – the people who work in the arcades and the pubs, who fill up the coffee shops in the days and the lesser-known late night bars in the night.

In the thick of it all at home, I’ve also been lucky enough to be involved through my job in a lot of the most exciting Cardiff events of the last ten years – from the opening of hotels and bars through a first Grand Slam in 27 years to the launch of the St David’s shopping centre.

As I turned 30 I left city centre life for a few years among the leafy streets of Pontcanna before finally landing in Roath five years ago.

Roath’s been a revelation – from the obvious walks round the lake and pints in the Albany to discovering Allen’s Bakery or that you can eat in at Troy. It’s everything I love about Cardiff concentrated into one small area.

I felt immediately at home in Cardiff and after my first decade, can’t imagine living anywhere else. I love that it’s a city you can walk across in half and hour, mostly through parks if the mood takes you. I love its creativity, friendliness, informality and that more often than not, it feels like the capital village of Wales.

Matt Appleby works as a PR consultant in Cardiff and can be found at www.about.me/mattappleby. He’s on the team that set up www.roathcardiff.net , helps out with Cdfblogs and writes a food blog www.easyteas.co.uk. He’d like to solve Cardiff’s public transport difficulties by reopening the canals and launching a singing gondola service. He currently lives in Roath.

Matt was photographed in Roath by Lann Niziblian

 

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The People

“I love sitting in the Packet and looking at the old photos of the ships” – Hannah

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When I first arrived here, Cardiff was an airport waiting lounge to me – a transitory, temporal place where I could have a rest before embarking on another journey.

I ended up here by accident after an exhilarating year of travelling and working abroad, which had ended abruptly with my parents splitting up and the acknowledgement of £8k’s worth of debt. Before I went away, I’d always lived with certainty; going to college, going to university, going travelling … arriving home was disconcerting on many levels, and it was compounded by the series of events that immediately followed it.

Armed with a first class degree and a misplaced sense of worldliness and entitlement, I assumed that offers of policy and campaigns jobs would be piled up onto my doormat when I got home. The reality was that, in 2009, everyone was struggling to find work, and apparently people aren’t entitled to Jobseekers Allowance if they’ve been swanning around south America for the past year. So, my boyfriend and I had to sleep on the floor of my parents’ tiny two-up, two-down house that was barely big enough to fit a double airbed in to. When they split up after two months, we had to move in to a holiday caravan.

Over the summer, I filled in 87 job applications, wrote articles for numerous websites and magazines and volunteered with a local charity. When I was finally offered a part time, six month research contract in Cardiff, it felt like it was the biggest career break that anyone had ever got, in the world, ever.

On the day I got the job, my friend took me out for a celebratory meal. As we drove around Roath Lake and bathed in the late summer sun on the Juno Lounge terrace, I thought ‘I can deal with this for a few months – it’s not Buenos Aires, but I can live here, it’s not too bad’.

We moved into a little flat in Heath, with one part-time, temporary job between the two of us. A week later, two bailiffs walked through the door and told us we had 10 minutes to get as much of our stuff as we could pack, and get out. The landlord hadn’t paid his rent for nine months, and the flat was being repossessed. We had nowhere to go. We’d paid agent’s fees, the first month’s rent and a deposit on the flat, mostly from cash advances on the credit card, and now we were homeless. Suddenly, the city seemed threatening and aggressive. It was telling us ‘this is real life, kids, deal with it. The fun part of your lives is over’.

Of all the experiences we had while travelling, all the sticky situations we got into and all the people that we met, nothing taught me more about life than those three months after coming home. Cardiff had given me some important life lessons, but it had also taught me that I can deal with a lot of shit that life can throw at me.

Two and a half years later, after two jobs and three houses, I’m attempting to reconcile my original reaction to the city with how I feel about it now. My intention had been to live here for a few months, earn some money and go away again. I deliberately refrained from signing up to long phone contracts, making close friends or acquiring too many possessions, in the belief that I’d have to get rid of everything all over again. For the past two years, I’ve desperately tried to embrace this Zen-like impermanence to an extreme extent, but the people I’ve met, the jobs I’ve had, the houses I’ve lived in and the things I’ve realised have made the city into an inextricable and permanent part of me.

It’s easy to think of travelling as an all-encompassing cure to naivety, and while I still spend all of my money on travelling, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a very false, privileged and Western thing to do. Being in a place for, at most, three weeks, is an incredibly shallow way of experiencing it. Zipping between continents and not really penetrating the surfaces of places is fine, but now when I travel, I take the time to stay with local people; I attempt to get a sense of what it’s like to be in a place permanently, for better or worse.

I’m still only beginning to scrape the surface of what Cardiff has to offer. I am continually meeting creative, interesting people who are involved in all sorts of activities (like this website).

I love sitting in the Packet and looking at the old photos of the ships.

I love talking to my 80 year old neighbour in Grangetown and hearing about what this part of the city used to be like.

I love working in a place that is like a microcosm of the city.

In many ways, Cardiff has given me a much more genuine ‘life experience’ than I ever got by flitting around the world, by embracing the permanence of it as a place – its people and its culture, rather than treating it as a temporal space. I guess you can get as much or as little out of a city as you like. I’ve inadvertently put time into this city, and it’s rewarded me.

Hannah is a travel writer, designer and photographer, originally spawned in the mysterious depths of Nottingham. Following a bout of education and swanning around the globe, she arrived in Cardiff to work as a freelance researcher and designer in the voluntary sector before being lured into the dark art of parliamentary research. She spends her time travelling, taking photos, cooking, writing, designing and studying Spanish and human rights law. She currently lives in Grangetown, and you can see some of her work at www.hannahjohnson.co.uk.

Hannah was photographed at The Packet by Adam Chard

 

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The People

“It all began for me with my first exhibition at Milgi” – SnowSkull

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Despite not growing up in the “bright lights” of Cardiff I have always felt drawn to the city with its many different cultures – this is where I found my feet so to speak.

From a young age I’ve always been interested in all forms of art. After school was art college, where my interests also took me into music, through someone I met who is still a very good friend. Our friendship influenced me to be one of the founding members of bands such as Funeral For A Friend, From This Moment On and Dignity Dies First. This in turn led us to touring the UK including Cardiff venues Clwb Ifor Bach, Barfly and The Point (both since disappeared). Also parts of Europe in the back of tour vans – which still hold fond memories today and the amazing people I have met along the way who have helped to shape my life. I love an array of different styles of music and I believe that all music is one – there’s simply good and bad in every genre.

Through music I found poetry and philosophy, which in turn has developed me into an abstract artist known as “SnowSkull”, so-called after one of my favorite poets Gregory Corso and influenced by such artists as Picasso, Basquiat and Jesse Reno.

My plan is to delve into other aspects of art to experiment and showcase the alternative contemporary art scene which is already established in Cardiff with the likes of Chapter Arts, Project Ten and Tactile Bosch (to name a few), and independent galleries like The Sho and G39.

But it all began for me with my first exhibition at Milgi – a vegetarian art cafe run by sisters Rebecca and Gabby Kelly. It was these two young women who gave me the opportunity to showcase my art and I will be forever greatful for their help and continued friendship. You’re always sure to have a good welcome at Milgi’s – friendly staff, good organic food and a homely atmosphere. You can even pick up a bargain at the Northcote Lane Market, held at the Milgi warehouse on the first Sunday of every month, which also hosts anything from exhibitions to comedy shows and workshops. The Kelly sisters are very supportive of the local art scene, as they were when they co-ran the Cardiff Arts Institute with Kaptin and Matt the Hat.

Although only open for a couple of years, I loved the C.A.I. It was like a second home to me. I remember nights when there were sometimes just me, Kaptin and the bar staff watching great producers such as Ital Tek, Linton Brown & Pangaea who have all gone on to greater things since their Cardiff appearances. Word of mouth soon spread and before we knew, it was a thriving community where music art and friends came together on a regular basis, kind of like ‘The Hacienda meets Cheers’. Just before Cardiff Arts changed hands I was asked to paint a mural on one of the walls – of which I am still very proud of. Unfortunately, due to new ownership, my art is gone, along with the good times and bad hangovers.

Six months on I feel that Cardiff is not the same without the Arts Institute. It’s a shame because it seems that only commercial bars have the capacity to stay afloat. I have met people from all walks of life who have left their mark on me in some way or another. A big influence on my life is Kaptin – for me, one of the biggest personalities in Cardiff. He lives and breathes music and alongside local producers Stagga & Monky are known as the Chrome Kids – a family that I have recently joined. Chrome Kids are an electronic music and art collective. Our aim is to put on nights showcasing local talent. We also do a fortnightly month radio show on Radio Cardiff, generating an average audience of approx 500, but our intentions are to widen the spectrum.

I currently have a studio for my artwork at Warwick Hall. I share the building with an abundance of talent which varies from painters, photographers, ceramicists, graphic designers and installation artists who are coming together with plans to put on events and shows.

Music, art and poetry run through my veins and I have future projects involving all three. If I didn’t live in Cardiff I would never have had the opportunities I’ve had, or met the people who have influenced me. Who knows what the future holds – but at the moment I am happy to be living in Our Nation’s Capital – ‘Cardiff’.

SnowSkull is an abstract neo-expressionist painter and is part of the Chrome Kids family, Sleep Walk collective, DSY and The Nines. His hobbies include listening, looking, touching things and dreaming. Keep up to date on future shows and works at www.snowskull.blogspot.com or on Facebook or on Twitter @snowskullartist. He currently lives in Roath.

SnowSkull was photographed at his studio in Warwick Hall by Simon Ayre

 

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We Are Cardiff Productions, Whats on

A Roath state of mind exhibition launch party

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Big shout out to everyone who came down to our Roath state of mind exhibition launch on Friday. It was really good to see you all there, and thanks to Waterloo Teahouse for putting on such a wonderful spread for our party! It was also nice to meet some new friends and see some new faces – including a couple of Penylan councillors and local MP, Jenny Willott.

Thanks to all your generosity in purchasing raffle tickets, we made a massive £273! Thank you all so much. That will cover the printing costs for the exhibition and go in the pot towards our documentary film that we are making about Cardiff. For more information on that, visit the We Are Cardiff: Portrait of a City blog.

Photos of the launch event were taken by Ffion Matthews:

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We also need to give a big thanks to everyone who donated raffle prizes or just helped out in anyway… in no particular order:

Don’t forget the exhibition is there until 2 July – Waterloo Gardens Teahouse is one of the nicest independent tea shops in Cardiff, so we definitely recommend setting aside a few hours to go enjoy some of their delicious teas and have a nose at our exhibition!

‘We Are Cardiff: a Roath state of mind’ exhibition
Waterloo Gardens Teahouse
Exhibition 29 May – 2 July 2012
www.waterlootea.com

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The People

“there are so many great green spaces in Cardiff” – Patches

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I may well have been born in Cardiff but my first real home began in Spring 2010 in Grangetown. They picked me up from the re-homing centre in Aberdare and I was a bit nervous when they first bought me indoors, took my lead off and told me I was home. I remember settling in fairly quickly though and enjoyed jumping all over the leather furniture and sitting in the window. It wasn’t long before I’d assumed the role of park warden for the park opposite our house. So many dogs coming and going but no one else seemed to be keeping an eye on them.

They really love me, the folks. They say I’ve made them into a little family. The three of us together. We cuddle up a lot and they throw my toys. I often call them The Ball-throwers. I really love my toys and I play with them all the time. They say I smile when I’m playing with them and it’s true.

I will never forget my first visit to Bute Park. It is huge! (Although a large dog did try and rugby tackle me which was scary). I loved the time they took me there for a picnic to meet a few of their friends not long after I moved in with them. I got a lot of attention. Lots of people in Cardiff know me. Apparently the first thing most people say to them now is ‘How’s Patches?’.

There are so many great places to go walkies in Cardiff. One of my other favourites is the Barrage. I like to try and go in the water but they don’t let me. I like walking around the museum, Roath Park, Sevenoaks Park, Thompson Park, Victoria Park … there are so many great green spaces in Cardiff.

It may surprise you to know that I am the Executive Director of a business in Cardiff called Patches & Co. It’s a website that sells bits and bobs….it’s all very cute. We like doing it and there’s a drawing of me in the logo, which was designed by The Boy (theboytattoo.com) who works over at Alpha Omega on St Mary St.

I don’t get on very well with other boy dogs. But I do have two good friends who are female and they live by me. They are called Ruth and Tamsin. Ruth gives me a lot of attention but Tamsin snaps.

Beyond Cardiff my favourite places are Criccieth and Tenby. I also often go for a ramble in the Vale of Glamorgan. In fact, take me pretty much anywhere outdoors and you can’t go far wrong.

Patches is a Parson Russell Terrier and has lived in Cardiff for two years. He is the executive director of Patches and Co (patchesandco.com) where he sells cute bits and bobs with the help of his doting humans Julie and Kai Jones. He is a very active citizen of Cardiff and loves the amount of green spaces on offer.

Patches was photographed in Alexandra Gardens, Cathays Park, by Doug Nicholls

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