2011 Welsh Arts Review of the Year

Tonight we celebrate the work of artists and performers,

musicians and actors in Wales and beyond

and the special contribution they've made to the vibrant arts and entertainment scene in 2011.

Actor Michael Sheen shares his memories of this year's theatrical spectacle, The Passion.

A truly meaningful event for me and probably something that will

never be surpassed really for me in my life, I don't think.

A dramatic change to the architectural landscape of our capital city.

So far I haven't come across a taxi driver who doesn't love it.

And a prize-winning author sets her sights high.

You couldn't put up with bad writing if you had that looking at you.

He'll be a spur.

An Easter weekend of warm sunshine brought thousands

to the streets of Port Talbot to witness what one London critic

called "the outstanding theatrical event of the decade".

The Passion starred the town's Michael Sheen

in a modern day retelling of Christ's crucifixion.

-Look at me.

-More than a thousand people were cast from the community

to join the professional actors

and the entire 72 hours was streamed online to reach a global audience.

I see you.

It absolutely was Michael Sheen's vision.

He had a clear sense of what it should be.

He put his heart and his soul

and every ounce of his immense intelligence

in it and it showed.

Yesterday we were many.

Today we are one.

The Passion absolutely deserved every one of its five stars

and I certainly don't give five stars away lightly.

This was a show that was on an absolutely epic scale

and yet it had a extraordinary intimacy about it as well.

So there are times when you were aware that you were amongst

an audience of 10,000 people

and yet it felt as though the show was being delivered just for you.

You have been charged with leading an ideological revolt against

the Council and the Company and of planning insurrectionist activities.

-Is this true?

-If you say it is.

Make an example of him, he's yours.

It was amazing to see the numbers of people for a start,

but also to be walking through my town, the streets that I'd walked along all my life

and seeing people I knew around me

and seeing such a strong sense of community there.

It allowed for spontaneous acts, too, and that was what was so wonderful about it.

It was really like sort of, I don't know, quite choking.

It was really quite emotional really.

You felt like you were in the middle of a historic moment.

It was extraordinary.

The most overwhelming thing we couldn't have predicted

was how much the people of that town were going to bring to that event.

They made it historic.

The barriers or boundaries that are there

between audience and performers and between what has been rehearsed

and what is spontaneous, all fell away and something very special happened.

I think that modern theatre is changing

and I think one of the things that The Passion

completely tapped into was the idea that audiences are very hungry

for theatre that is made with them rather than simply made for them.

I think one of the things National Theatre Wales

has been very successful about doing

is creating a community around theatre and around theatre events.

-His great speech at the end was "I remember".

-I remember this place.

After everything he remembered and this roar from the crowd of recognition.

Absolutely extraordinary.

I remember The Carlton and Pharaohs and Wall Street.

I remember donkey rides on the beach.

I can't imagine that anything could ever surpass that for me.

So it will certainly be, you know, the peak experience of my career

and certainly one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life.

National Theatre Wales continues a strong programme.

We had a very noisy arrival into the world

and we've produced a lot of work.

We've produced 15 shows,

which for most theatres

who do three, four shows a year that's six years' work, and we've done it in a year and a half.

The latest was a two-month tour across Wales

of the theatre's first musical - The Village Social.

We always said right at the beginning, what we want is

for the people of Wales to feel ownership over this company.

-Hello.

-Hello.

It's about making work that really resonates for people

that they feel a connection to, they feel inspired to go,

that will transform their experience of where they live,

of how they think about themselves and how they relate to this nation.

# Tear you all apart... #

Welsh artists and photographers continued to be inspired

by the landscape around them in 2011.

Swansea Valley-based Paul Emmanuel picked up

the Welsh Artist of the Year award for his fleece paintings,

while keen amateur photographer Emma Shepherd

scooped the top spot in this year's Photomarathon,

a 12-hour challenge on the streets of Cardiff.

Got a camera for my 30th birthday about five years ago

and I did a few courses, got really into it.

I'd seen the Photomarathon before and I really thought

it would be a good creative challenge so decided to give it a go.

399 other entrants thought the same.

You have 12 hours and you have to take 12 photographs on 12 given topics.

You start at ten o'clock in the morning.

Go to the Millennium Centre and pick up your first four topics.

Go off and take them.

You go back at two and pick up four more, and at six and pick up four more.

That's the killer, cos you're really tired by six o'clock.

I had to look after my kids for a lot of those hours

so I thought I may as well get them involved in the photos

so I got them doing all kinds of things for ice cream

and sweets and other things they don't normally have!

With memory cards handed in, Emma faced a six-week wait

until her winning entries were confirmed.

Yeah, really proud. Yeah, I was really pleased.

Very shocked, couldn't quite believe it.

I thought it was a joke.

But yeah, it's really given me confidence

to go off and do some more challenging photography.

And the winner's prize? A brand new camera, of course.

I'd like to compete again next year, don't know if I'll get anywhere

but I'd like to do it just for the challenge and it's a really enjoyable day.

The rural landscape of the Swansea Valley inspired Paul Emmanuel this year.

The idea for working with the wool primarily came

from walking the dogs around the hills,

and looking at bits of fleece that had been caught in brambles

or in fences which still maybe had

a bit of sheep marker on.

So I started thinking about colour and mark making in this landscape

which is only sheep.

So I started collecting bits and pieces

and it was, "This is nuts, there's just not enough of it."

I was talking to a barmaid in the local and she said,

"My gran's got a sackful up at the farm and she's going to burn it.

"Do you want it?" It's like, "Great, I can try something now properly."

And I started working with it

and first couple of things worked beautifully.

It really felt at that moment

that this is a form that I'd been looking for a long time.

This fleece, Penrhiwllwythau, took the title and the £2,000 prize

with Paul describing his work as "hairdos for sheep"!

I start off with the raw fleece and then work in an oil pigment

instead of the sheep marker into its surface.

And then to really make a difference between the one and the other,

I comb the fleece out and use human hair-care products

like hair gels, hair lacquers, things like that to give them their form.

I've had so much support, really, for what I've been doing.

It's really offered me further avenues to explore, really,

and more opportunities for the work so it's been great.

Everything about the experience was fantastic.

Still making a noise in the visual arts world,

sculptor David Nash.

His remarkable pieces are now sold worldwide

but are inspired by the landscape around Blaenau Ffestiniog

where he made his home 40 years ago.

The best thing that I did

was to stay here. I think for a lot of sculptors, place,

location of where they are, is very important. It runs deep.

And particularly with Blaenau, which is like an enormous sculpture.

These beautiful diagonal lines have just found themselves

out of millions of loose pieces which have just been, in a way,

just tumbled down, thrown away but ended up with a very precise geometric form.

Nash's work in wood was the subject of a major exhibition

at the Mostyn Gallery in Llandudno this autumn.

Entitled, Red, Black, Other it was the first of its kind in over two decades.

I've always been aware of possibilities.

They just wink at me.

All over the place.

And if I'm alert to them I can catch them.

Challenging budgets aside, Welsh film-makers still managed

to bring rich and compelling stories to the silver screen this year,

and once again the stunning scenery of Wales provided the backdrop.

-RADIO:

-'The German invasion continues to advance north and west.'

My name is Captain Wolfram.

We have established an observation post in this valley.

Resistance is an adaptation of a novel by Welsh author Owen Sheers.

Released last month, it imagines the lives of a rural Welsh community

living under German occupation.

GUNSHOT

Set in Swansea, Submarine tells the story

of an adolescent boy looking for love.

Also based on a novel by Welsh author Joe Dunthorne,

it was lead actor Craig Roberts's first feature film.

To us and a wonderful evening of lovemaking.

-What? Now?

-Yeah.

You're a serial killer.

Patagonia is Cardiff-born director Marc Evans's eighth feature

and tells the parallel stories of road trips taken in Wales and Argentina.

Released this March, the film saw an acting debut

for singer-songwriter Duffy, who also performed some of the soundtrack.

It's on the long list as the British entry

for Best Foreign Language Film at next year's Oscars.

The BBC Cardiff Singer Of The World competition is now recognised

across the globe as a magnet for the very best in young operatic talent.

This June, the capital city welcomed 20 shortlisted competitors

from all four corners, each vying for the coveted title

and the £15,000 top prize.

SHE SINGS A HIGH NOTE

You think of the talent that's been given a platform at Cardiff Singer.

You think of Bryn Terfel, you think of Dmitri Hvorostovsky,

Karita Mattila who was the very first winner.

You see them now when you're looking on programmes of opera houses,

at the Met in New York and Convent Garden.

That says a lot about Wales about where we put our singers

at the centre of our culture.

Four preliminary concerts whittled the singers to a short list of five.

Each required to sing with full orchestral accompaniment.

# I am the wife of Mao Tse Tung... #

I got very excited by the performance of Hye Jung Lee,

the Korean soprano who sang the amazing aria,

I Am The Wife Of Mao Tse Tung, from Nixon In China by John Adams.

When she just stood there with this little red book

and this sort of Chinese Communism or this sermon.

It was so, such a fine performance.

# Oh, a-a-a-a-a-a-a. #

But the host nation can't claim an advantage

in this prestigious global competition.

I always feel hugely sorry for the Welsh competitor

because we've never had a winner.

We've even had Bryn Terfel in there and he was pipped to it Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

But John Pierce, one of the nicest men you'll ever meet

with a beautiful light tenor voice,

he didn't get past his round but did Wales proud.

As well as the main prize, the competition offers

an audience prize and a song prize for best Lieder or art song.

For me, the voice of the week was the American soprano Leah Crocetto.

She started out as a cabaret singer and discovered these upper notes.

Interestingly, in the wrap party there was a karaoke machine

and Leah Crocetto just got on there and belting out these show tunes.

She was equally amazing doing that as she was singing opera.

In this most partisan of musical events, the audience, viewers

and even the TV presenter pick their favourites.

I was convinced that Andrei Bondarenko from the Ukraine,

the baritone, was going to win.

Because I think that's a name, it's difficult to say

but I think we'll all be having to learn how to say it

in a couple of years' time because he's really one to watch.

HE SINGS IN ITALIAN

Valentina Nafornita who won, glorious soprano, very young.

There's huge potential there and she looks like Miss World or something,

she's beautiful.

# Longtemps encore

# Encore! #

APPLAUSE

Ten years ago, author John Harrison took a gamble.

He packed in his job as a town planner for the council

and went travelling in South America.

A decade later, that gamble paid off

when he was awarded the Welsh Book of the Year prize

for Cloud Road, his account of his five-month adventure in the High Andes.

Ned Thomas scooped the same prize in the Welsh language category

for Bydoedd - Cofiant Cyfnod, his autobiography, entitled Planets - Memoirs of a Time.

One of the literary world's most prestigious prizes

is awarded annually in Wales to a published author aged under 30.

In a ceremony at Swansea's National Waterfront Museum last month,

Belfast-born Lucy Caldwell scooped the £30,000 Dylan Thomas Prize.

Amazing.

When they made the announcement, I think my heart was in my mouth.

I was pretty inarticulate I think for the first couple of minutes.

It's extraordinary the talent we see considering they're young writers.

But a lot of them aren't first time writers.

They might be young but they're experienced writers in their field.

And they represent a kind of global writing community

that's very exciting, post-modern in a way, that's looking at issues

but through the eyes of various communities and individuals.

I think that can actually have an effect on writing from Wales.

We can learn from these extremely talented young writers from around the globe.

I'm thinking he's going to go on my desk.

But I might have to turn him away.

He's got quite an intense stare!

I think you couldn't put up with bad writing

if you had that looking at you. He'll be a spur.

One of this year's judges, Rachel Trezise, was spurred to keep writing

after winning the inaugural Dylan Thomas Prize in 2006

for Fresh Apples, a collection of short stories.

Rachel's writing is influenced by the characters in her home town, Treorchy.

I was 28 when I won the prize. I was carrying a lot of student debt

so it meant I didn't have to go back to work.

I was working in a seatbelt factory at the time

as a Sales and Purchase Ledger.

So I didn't have to go back to the factory.

I could just spend two or three years just writing,

which was fantastic for a young author.

The prize brought a lot of pressure.

As well as a lot of praise and accolade I had to live up to it.

I felt I had to live up to the judges decision,

prove myself worthy.

A lot of the pressure came from me but also around me with my contemporaries as well.

I had to prove myself.

Sixteen Shades of Crazy, Rachel's third novel,

was published in paperback this January.

My writing tends to be kitchen sink drama, I suppose.

Run of the mill daily life of people in the Rhondda Valley.

It's not very high on drama but it's high on character

and character's reactions to certain things I suppose

and testimony to the strength of people who live in places

like the Rhondda Valley where poverty is a big problem.

"Ellie held her bag, fiddling with the knot. The plastic slippery with perspiration.

"Nowadays street dealers were only concerned with their profits.

"There was no time for presentation. Nobody used paper wraps any more.

"She pushed her fingertip into the powder.

"Kept it there for as long as it was polite, maybe longer

"and smeared it over her taste buds absorbing the sweet, glucosic tang."

" 'What do they call this in America?' she said

"cheeks already tingling with anticipation."

I think that writing has moved on a lot for young people.

I suppose young writers tend to write their own lives.

They're thinly veiled autobiographies

or things they know or places which they grew up as my book was.

I think young writers are moving a lot faster now

and picking up international stories I suppose from the media

and putting their own interpretation and slant on them.

Anyone travelling into the city centre from the north of Cardiff

will have noticed a transformation in its architectural landscape this year.

The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama

has completed its £22.5 million redevelopment

and now boasts a brand new recital hall and theatre,

rehearsal spaces and public areas for students and visitors alike.

It was possible before we had this building to walk past the college

and not notice that you'd done so.

You can't do that now. You can't ignore it.

We're very proud of the building.

We're very proud of being a national conservatoire

and just having our name on the door is a big difference.

For the architects, the re-design had to work

with the pre-existing college building

that had to stay open for students throughout.

The starting point was to design the inside of the concert hall,

the inside of the theatre.

The reason for that was to, for the concert hall specifically,

to get the best possible acoustic that we could.

To get an acoustic that was excellent

for all of the different types of repertoire the college perform here

and public artists will perform here.

CHORAL SINGING

We knew that if we didn't get a perfect acoustic,

for many artists, the building would have failed

and to build the first purpose built chamber recital hall in Wales,

there was a huge responsibility on us to get that right.

We're thrilled with the acoustic.

Many artists who have come and performed here

in the first few months who've said it's probably the best acoustic they've played in.

So Wales has got something incredibly special here

and we really cherish that.

It's completely transformed our whole life and everything we do.

There was an amazing moment,

the first time that the students walked into the building.

Having lived on a building site for two years, there was this extraordinary moment

when you could see students walking in and thinking, "This is for us."

But it's also a building other people can come into.

We run children's courses, summer schools.

We've developed all sorts of community programmes

that the general public can come in, of any age, and take part in.

In our first three weeks of opening

10,000 people came through the doors.

That was exactly what we wanted the building to do for us.

It just feels as if it's been here for a long time

and it feels perfect for this location.

My test is taxi drivers

and I haven't come across a taxi driver who doesn't love it.

Barely a mile away, the Sherman Cymru Theatre Company

will move back into its new space early next year

after an 18 month, £6.5 million re-development.

Even though we've been away from the building

I think it's been a really good experience for the company.

It's been a chance to work outside, different spaces in the city.

We've collaborated with different companies

we wouldn't have worked with before.

So, it's been a real artistic and production challenge.

You sort of get used to working in a building

and what the building can offer so being out of it has been

part of the richness of making this whole project happen.

With a reputation for encouraging new writing,

the theatre will open with a new front of house and rehearsal space.

The theatre's got to be designed to be engaging, to be attractive,

to draw people in.

Part of that process is thinking in terms of

how do you create a showpiece.

But you've got to be thinking about practical requirements of the theatre company.

How do you make sure they can use the building

in a way they haven't been able to use it before.

The doors will open in early February with a new production

by Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru called Sgint.

There's a bit of nail biting but it's under control.

I've got nail clippers rather than getting them too near the mouth!

The Welsh Music scene has remained as vibrant as ever this year

with some of our biggest names continuing to make an impact.

BBC Radio Wales DJ Bethan Elfyn delivers her verdict.

I think there's a few names that really stand out

in terms of making a mark on the year.

One of my favourite bands, Manic Street Preachers,

have been all over it.

Here in Blackwood, it is the Manic Street Preachers!

One, two, three!

# But you

# You stole the sun from my heart... #

What attracted me to the band was just how different they were

and how many statements they had about life to live it to the full

and which had a real resonance across Wales when I was growing up and it still does.

The message is still really important from them.

For me, the small gigs are the really scary ones.

It's much easier to play the bliss of euphoria of mass communication

in something like the Millennium or wherever where we've done that.

It's much less nerve-wracking than seeing 200 extremely hardcore fans in front of you.

# A design for life

-AUDIENCE:

-# A design for life... #

We've seen so many huge bands reunite in the past few years

and the Manics have always said "we never went away,

"we kept making albums and we want to celebrate everything we've achieved."

The Welsh Music Award,

the first one this year, saw a panel of judges, myself included,

having to pick from 12 albums.

There's something so focused

and really simple about this idea that celebrates just new releases.

The winner this year was Gruff Rhys who I think was well deserved

because he's come up with such a beautiful album.

It's his third solo album, Hotel Shampoo.

# I hear footsteps coming from the end of the lift... #

It was a huge surprise to win the award.

I was really happy to be nominated.

There's loads of really good records on that list.

It's really nice to hear bands that are established

like the Manic Street Preachers and Funeral for a Friend

mentioned in the same sentence as people like Gareth Bonello, Y Niwl.

I thought it was a really strong list

and it just shows there is space for an award like this.

Hopefully they'll make people aware of the great records that are coming out of Wales.

Tipping people for 2012 greatness is always very difficult

because you always feel like you've put so much pressure on somebody.

Just a personal favourite of mine, Cate Le Bon,

has been touring the States and she's just going from strength to strength.

Gruff Rhys released her album last year

and hopefully we'll see some new material from her.

And also Jodie Marie has made a bit of a name for herself in 2011.

Been touring with Will Young.

Signed to a major record label

so I think we'll see more from Jodie Marie.

# As we're walking home together... #

'I couldn't possibly tell you what the themes will be next year.

But I imagine we'll see more reunions.

Let's hope there might be a Super Furries

or a Gorky Zygotic Mynci reunion in there.

Well, that's just about it for our look back at 2011

but there is so much more to look forward to next year.

The Artes Mundi competition will bring cutting edge visual artists

from around the world to exhibit here in Wales.

And the Cultural Olympiad aims to offer a lasting legacy

for the arts here as part of London 2012.

But for now, have a very happy New Year. Goodbye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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