Author: Rhys Gregory

Glynn Vivian Art Gallery is delighted to announce the Wakelin Award recipient for 2022. The annual award is given to an artist living and working in Wales, whose work is purchased for the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery’s Permanent Collection, and will be on display at the Gallery in spring 2023.  The recipient for The Wakelin Award 2022 is Ingrid Murphy. Previous award winners include Brendan Stuart Burns, Anthony Shapland, Catrin Webster, Jonathan Anderson, Meri Wells, David Cushway, Helen Sear, Clare Woods, Alexander Duncan, Philip Eglin, Richard Billingham, Cinzia Mutigli and Anya Paintsil. This year’s selector is Swansea based artist and…

The city’s newest hub is preparing to open after the major refurbishment of a north Cardiff library. Rhiwbina Community Wellbeing Hub will welcome customers back to the former library building on Pen-Y-Dre on Monday, January 16 following the remodelling of the facility to enable the delivery ofadditional and enhanced services for the community. With funding from Welsh Government’s Integrated Care Fund,Integration and Rebalancing Care Fund (IRCF) and MALD (Museums, Archives and Libraries Division), the building has been transformed into a fit-for-purpose community facility that will support the co-location of library services with new advice, health and wellbeing, housing and social…

Market traders are offering a new free service – they’re providing customers with Swansea Council recycling bags. Two stalls in Swansea Market now have supplies of the green bags and food bin bags that can be collected for free by city centre shoppers. Homeware supplies store Market Spares and coffee shop Storm in a Teacup are already handing out hundreds of the bags every week. They join other locations around the city offering a similar service, including council offices, neighbourhood shops, post offices, libraries and recycling centres. Wayne Holmes, of Market Spares, said: “We thought this’d be a great idea,…

LOCAL businesses working on major regeneration projects for Swansea Council are helping save millions of pounds a year, boosting and protecting jobs. City centre schemes like Swansea Arena, the Kingsway makeover and the creation of the new community hub on Oxford Street have all benefited from local firms winning shares of contract work. Other heritage projects like the restoration of the Hafod-Morfa Copperworks, the ongoing renewal of the Bascule bridge and the Palace Theatre have also seen millions of pounds of council-managed money spent in Swansea and Wales. The success stories of local small and medium-sized businesses bidding for work…

Work progresses on Powys County Council’s Levelling Up funded project to rejuvenate the local canal network in Montgomeryshire by opening up previously un-navigable sections of the canal to increase its appeal and attract more tourists to the region. Announced by the Chancellor in the 2021 Autumn Budget, the £4.8billion Levelling Up Fund invests in infrastructure to improve everyday life across the UK including regenerating town centre and high streets, upgrading local transport, and investing in cultural and heritage assets. Of this fund Powys secured almost £14million for this project. The enhancement of the Y Lanfa building, its wharf and the…

A world-renowned contemporary circus is heading to Swansea while an international crime fiction festival will be held in Aberystwyth in 2023, thanks to funding from the Welsh Government. The Circus Village is coming to Swansea for the first time, led by the internationally acclaimed NoFit State Circus in a partnership with leading circus companies and artists, and an international crime fiction festival in Aberystwyth will receive Event Wales funding for the development of the events. NoFit State will welcome around 200 UK circus artists for a programme of collaborative professional development in South Wales. The Circus Village was first held in…

A slowdown in the final quarter of the year saw the take up of industrial property over 50,000 sq ft in Wales reach just under 2m sq ft in 2022, down significantly from the 3.49m sq ft in 2021 and the 2.74m sq ft in 2020, according to research from Knight Frank. Neil Francis, head of Logistics & Industrial at Knight Frank in Cardiff, said: “After a strong third quarter where 1.3m sq ft was transacted, the final quarter (Q4) witnessed a slowdown in take up for large units, with just one deal of 103,000 sq ft completed across all…

A biotech and medtech innovation hub in the Welsh capital has reached a milestone third decade of helping to grow some of the UK’s most exciting businesses. Founded in 1992, Cardiff Medicentre was the first business incubator of its kind in the UK. It now operates as a joint venture between Cardiff University and Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, providing low-cost desk leasing through to high-spec laboratories for start-ups and established life science businesses.  Set in the grounds of the University Hospital of Wales, it provides the environment and the hands-on support to get innovation off the ground and…

Swansea Council is to introduce a plan that will help it go net zero carbon by 2030. A draft plan to reach this milestone in the fight against climate change was approved by the council’s ruling cabinet on December 15. The plan could cost around £187m over the next eight years. It’d see the council achieve a balance between the greenhouse gases it puts into the atmosphere and those it takes out – net zero carbon.  Around £4m of the figure is already budgeted for. The council would look for most of the other funding to come from national governments and from…

Talyllyn Railway has won a National Rail Heritage Award for the reconstruction of an original locomotive watering point on the line. The railway was jointly awarded the Hendy and Pendle Trust Volunteers Award by The Duke of Gloucester at a ceremony held in London. The Tŷ Dŵr watering point, originally installed when the railway was built in 1865, transferred water from a nearby waterfall to the first locomotive shed by a series of troughs supported on slate columns. The shed was situated on what was then the mineral extension between Abergynolwyn station, the original passenger terminus and what is now…