Director's Blog - July 2026
03/08/2026
I hope you are enjoying some time off to rest and recuperate over the summer. Team WAHWN are looking forward to a quieter August, getting ready for a busy September hosting our next wave of Cynefin events.
On 9th September we will deliver the second webinar of our Cynefin programme, again aligned with the Marmot principles - Healthy and Sustainable Communities and Places, 09 Sep - when we look forward to welcoming Heledd Fychan, Minister for Culture and Sport, Karen Mak, Senior Research Fellow in Epidemiology/Statistics UCL and showcase exemplary practice from across Wales. On 24th September we will hold an in-person event at YMCA, Port Talbot focusing on ill health prevention. Capacity is limited, with almost a quarter of tickets gone, so early booking for this one is recommended.
We are grateful to our cohort of Cynefin Champions’ time and expertise who are supporting us to reflect on the challenges, evidence and practice, and pull together to a set of policy recommendations which will be refined after the last Cynefin event on 21st October. The Cynefin programme is timely, aligned to Plaid Cymru’s First 100 Days Plan; and a Culture panel and presentation – Unlocking Wales’ potential: a new culture strategy for Wales’ with Heledd Fychan and Dafydd Rhys, ACW at the Eisteddfod on 5th August in Pembrokeshire, and conveniently just an hour up the road for me!
A vision for culture and sport in Wales: call for evidence | GOV.WALES is now live with a deadline of 18th December for responses. Welsh Government are calling on our sectors for evidence to help shape a shared national vision, and identify practical actions needed.
We also welcome Heledd Fychan’s recent exclusive interview with Arts Professional Exclusive: New Welsh Culture Secretary on inheriting a 'crisis situation' - Arts Professional where she acknowledged that although major funding increases cannot happen immediately, there is commitment to a trajectory of increased investment over time, and arguing that the arts sector has been underfunded. We await details of a new culture strategy consultation. Nerys Evans, Minister for Preventative and Public Health’s oral statement setting out her priorities for prevention - Wales must tackle the causes of ill health, not just the consequences - has positioned arts and sport as part of the prevention infrastructure and discussed "the wider role both arts and sports can have in health pathways".
We would encourage members to respond to the Health & Care Committee consultation which ends on 14th September. The consultation is looking for feedback on priorities and offers a real opportunity to highlight arts, health & wellbeing and its role in strengthening mental health services, strengthening partnerships between health and the arts and driving improvements in women’s health.
It’s also great to see Wales recognised on an international level in a recent article in The Art Newspaper comparing Wales and Greece, highlighting how both countries have moved significantly from seeing arts and health as a series of pilots and projects, to recognising their vital role to mainstream health policy and prevention. The article highlights the strong infrastructure Wales has in place and describes how Greece’s ‘cultural prescribing’ has become part of national healthcare infrastructure incorporating cultural prescription schemes into statutory healthcare policy, providing an example of what full scale integration can look like. In essence, Wales represents the opportunity and Greece represents the model.
In other news…
Stepping In
Our 12 Stepping In mentees are making great progress following their training week. With our additional funding from the Baring Foundation and Gwendoline & Margaret Davies Charity, they have undertaken Mental Health First Aid Training and Refugee and Asylum Seeker Awareness training with EYST - helping the mentees further understand the barriers faced by this minority community.
"Upskilling and training is a vital part of the Camu i Mewn | Stepping In programme. Providing an oversight of the sector in North Wales, with presentations and activities from our partners and projects give an enriched knowledge of the arts, health and wellbeing sector. Training sessions like Group B Safeguarding, Creating Neuro-Inclusive Spaces for Creative Expression, Dementia Friendly and Trauma Informed training are building their knowledge bank and providing them a new skill set for future roles in the sector." (Rebecca Hardy-Griffith, Programme Manager)
Two mentees have already been commissioned to deliver project work, with the remaining mentees undertaking their live placements over the summer and autumn months.
Welsh Language
North Wales Welsh language interventions were the focus of our July network meeting, where Iola Ynyr introduced the Welsh Language Arts Consortium, and we discussed the barriers and opportunities for increasing the number of Welsh language practitioners. We look forward to collaborating with the consortium over the coming year to unlock more potential.
Wishing you a good summer break and I look forward to seeing you at a future WAHWN event.
Onwards and Upwards!
Angela
