Ar Waith Ar Daith: Awen Training Schools

The creation of Ar Waith Ar Daith, a major one-off commission in 2015 by the Wales Millennium Centre, was accompanied by three major training schools, hosted and presented by Walk the Plank.

Held across the nation, we delivered three artistic training schools designed to ensure that the impact of Ar Waith Ar Daith was felt widely across the artistic and geographic landscape of Wales.

We first identified artists who had at least two years’ professional experience and an interest in taking their practice into the outdoors. We then invited them to spend a week together exploring a variety of techniques, which they then tried out for real by creating work in the public realm. Our experts were joined by guest artists from Wales to deliver both technical to practical training sessions, along with inspiring discussions and plenty of playtime.

The first week’s training school, developed with Galeri in North Wales, was on the use of fire, fireworks and light in nighttime performance. The resultant evening event delighted an audience of local families, lighting up the Menai Strait with fiery performance before a fishing boat carrying a giant scallop lantern set sail.

The focus for the second school, which was held in the magical setting of Castell y Bere in Mid Wales (managed by Cadw), was storytelling and site-responsive performance. As the audience explored Llewellyn’s ruined castle, they heard tales of witchery and mischief, accompanied by traditional musicians and plenty of fire. Bad weather forced a change of location for the second night, which in turn provided a fantastic live learning experience for the Awen practitioners.

The third and final week-long school was held in partnership with The Riverfront in Newport, South Wales, and used daytime processional and carnival-making techniques to explore outdoor parades in the context of community celebration. For the live event, dancers from Newport accompanied a giant cauldron of fire that rolled through the streets of Maindee before coming to rest below a group aerial dancers, working to a beautiful soundtrack played live by Sinfonia Cymru.

Four months later in September 2015, many of the Awen practitioners returned to take part in the finale of Ar Waith Ar Daith in Cardiff Bay, putting some of their new skills into practice in the context of one of Wales’s largest outdoor performances – which was also broadcast live by S4C.

Visiting experts and other partners from Wales included Marc Rees, Peter Stevenson, Goffee, Mr & Mrs Clark, Hijinx, SWICA Carnival, Crafted Space, NoFit State, Citrus Arts, Chloe Loftus Dance, Desperate Men, Maindee Festival, Big Splash and Articulture.