A society with good cultural well-being is one where people benefit from culture, heritage and the Welsh language and can participate in the arts, sports, and leisure.
Our culture mission is to reinforce the positive impact of cultural well-being, so public bodies are making the urgent changes needed to promote culture and creativity, enhance the fabric of communities and promote multi-culturalism and the Welsh language.
A society with good cultural well-being is one where people benefit from culture, heritage and the Welsh language and can participate in the arts, sports, and leisure.
Harnessing the power of creativity, and bringing people together to co-imagine a better future, will be key to addressing some of the big challenges we face, such as climate change, social isolation, and economic inequality. Culture brings hope, positivity, and optimism to thinking about the long-term.
Asha Jane, Singer
We will make it our mission to reinforce the positive impact of cultural well-being. As a result, public bodies are making the urgent changes needed to promote culture and creativity, enhance the fabric of communities and promote multi-culturalism and the Welsh language.
Public bodies are not giving culture and the Welsh language sufficient attention in their well-being objectives and plans.
We are not finding the best ways to communicate the necessary actions ahead.
Lack of funding and short-sighted decisions are threatening community infrastructure and cohesion.
There is a good understanding of what cultural well-being encompasses and the positive impact of culture and the Welsh language on the implementation of the WFG Act.
Public bodies and Public Services Boards include cultural well-being within their well-being objectives.
Progress is being made by public bodies to meet national Welsh language milestones (to reach a million speakers by 2050).
Campaigns and action for positive change are more effective as a result of the contribution from cultural sectors.
Inclusion and access to cultural activities has improved, especially for people with protected characteristics and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Wales is making good progress in meeting the national well-being indicators that relate to culture, the Welsh language and community cohesiveness.
Across Cymru, the percentage of people attending or participating in arts, culture or heritage activities is increasing and more people can speak Welsh.
Communities are more involved in decisions affecting them.
All I have left of my great-grandmother is her letters.
While I was taking my first breath
she was watching the storm roll in,
lining the house with an army of sandbags,
willing the river to shush. It had given warning
in the bloat of it, with plastic bags and Stella cans
thrown up onto the grass. I know this
because my grandmother never had secrets.
She began writing me letters long before I existed,
so that I might grow into something good,
something brave.
I know of all her firsts.
First school, with the haunted bell tower
and the boys that cornered her in the playground.
First pet, a tan Labrador that uprooted
the floor tiles when left alone.
First fear, of being swallowed by the moon.
First home, council estate, a magnolia tree
that shed petals of pink snow in spring.
Her first kiss, between the rocks at the water’s edge,
incoming tide snaking up her legs.
There are lessons here.
I dream of Cardiff, where I chase
my grandmother’s outline through the back streets,
seek fingerprints on shop windows,
a flash of her on the top deck of a bus.
Sometimes, I find her on the green of Bute Park
picking wild garlic, sheltering
from a shower at Central Station,
or clasping a blue bag of fruit on City Road.
She tells me nothing was an accident.
The leaders, the people, they rolled
over like spent dogs, yawned above the warnings.
All my great-grandmother wanted was to die
an honest woman, on honest land.
I will never re-live her firsts,
never see the garden
where she planted magnolia
so that I too could hold pink petals of snow.
Her underwater city is a skeleton, a shipwreck;
but still, I ache for it.
I read her letters to the sky
while the storm rolls in, I line
the house with an army of sandbags.
