On 26 September 2023, an oral statement was made in the Senedd: Cadw by Dawn Bowden Deputy Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism on engaging communities with heritage.
… The response to the young custodians scheme….exceeded everyone’s expectations…
Senedd Wales writes:
Dawn Bowden MS – Deputy Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism
… Over the last year, Cadw has delivered innovative programmes to increase the engagement of Welsh communities with Cadw sites and the wider historic environment. This work demonstrates the contribution that our outstanding heritage can make to the well-being of the people of Wales and in particular its health and educational benefits.
Later this week, I will visit Cadw’s Neath abbey monument to discuss conservation and community engagement at the site. Over the last year, Cadw has linked with D?r-y-Felin Comprehensive School in Neath abbey to launch a young custodians scheme for this important Cistercian abbey site. This is part of a larger Cadw initiative, the young custodians Wales, to encourage young people to take ownership of their historic environment. Cadw has young custodians at several sites in north Wales, but its introduction at Neath abbey represents the initiative’s first appearance in the south. The aim of the initiative is to create partnerships and learning spaces that complement the Welsh curriculum within communities and to encourage the young custodians to value and respect their Cadw monuments and the wider historic environment.
The response to the young custodians scheme at D?r-y-Felin has exceeded everyone’s expectations. Many pupils volunteered to become young custodians, and at the end of the school year they assisted teachers as the site became an open classroom for D?r-y-Felin’s entire year 8 class for a day. Cadw and D?r-y-Felin are working together to build on the strong foundation created by the initial success of the scheme.
While Neath abbey has been furthering the learning of D?r-y-Felin’s pupils, its Cistercian counterpart at Tintern, in the Wye valley, has been supporting the rehabilitation of young offenders. Over the last few years, Cadw has been co-operating with the Newport youth justice team on an initiative in which young offenders work at Tintern abbey as part of their rehabilitation. The young people, who are accompanied by supervisors, weed, clear paths and clean delicate stonework, and also interact with visitors and work alongside Cadw’s ground maintenance contractors to gain valuable work experience. The project has been recognised as best practice amongst youth justice teams and has demonstrated tangible benefits to both the participants and the site. The scheme’s success has seen the expansion of the initiative to Caerwent Roman town, with Cadw exploring its possible extension to other sites.
Cadw has also been working during the year to enhance volunteering opportunities at its sites. Volunteering affords opportunities to learn new skills, gain experience and work as part of a team. It can improve well-being and allow the volunteer to engage with the site and make a real contribution to the visitor experience. Cadw’s volunteers at Plas Mawr, the Elizabethan townhouse in Conwy, provide a perfect example of the important part that volunteers play in creating a memorable visit. The Plas Mawr volunteers were highly commended in the museum and heritage awards, and won the Wales region award in the volunteers for museum learning category at the Marsh awards in November. Significant progress has been made in recruiting new volunteers at Castell Caerffili and also at Castell Coch.
The ‘Anti-racist Wales Action Plan’ has set challenging goals to support all parts of society to embrace and celebrate Wales’s diverse cultural heritage. This includes working with black, Asian and minority ethnic communities to identify and lift barriers to accessing heritage sites. Cadw has supported communities who do not traditionally engage with our sites. For example, over 3,500 refugees and asylum seekers had free admission to Cadw’s sites last year. Cadw has also worked to diversify its website, co-creating content with the Romani Cultural and Arts Company and commissioning creative celebrations of black people in Welsh history.
It’s worth noting that we’re now in the midst of the annual Open Doors festival that takes place throughout September. Funded and organised by Cadw, it is part of the European Heritage Days festival and promotes awareness of and engagement with the Welsh historic environment. This year, the ever-popular celebration of Wales’s built heritage sees more than 200 of our nation’s historic sites and landmarks offering visitors free entry, some of which have never been accessible to the public before. The festival this year will encourage Welsh communities to explore some of the country’s lesser known and smaller scale sites. For example, this weekend you could take a tour of Segontium Roman fort, on the outskirts of Caernarfon, or St John’s House, which is the oldest habitable building in Bridgend, with beams dating back to 1511.
In closing… I would like to highlight some of Cadw’s initiatives to engage in the digital realm. Cadw led a myths and legends podcasting workshop this year. Fifty young people from Youth Shedz and Youth Cymru venues across Wales got hands-on experience of podcast production, from research and scripting to acting and sound engineering. It enhanced their skills and raised aspirations in the arts and the heritage sector. An even more exciting development is the ongoing work of the new Cadw Minecraft education offer, to link in with the existing Hwb Minecraft resource. That resource provides access to the popular gaming platform for educators and learners in Wales. Cadw Minecraft education will help young people to engage with the historic environment on a platform that they already know and love.
In conclusion, the recent pandemic brought into sharp focus the heritage that is on all of our doorsteps. With people restricted to the areas around their homes, the heritage located in their communities became the focus of attention. Now that we’ve emerged from the pandemic, Cadw is seeking to provide people with the opportunity to engage in the wider historic environment, both in the real and the digital worlds.
