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Re-imagining Cardiff’s Old Library: RWCMD launches its 75th birthday year
The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama will be celebrating its 75th birthday throughout this year with a clear focus on increasing accessibility to audiences and to the arts, and on its vision to ensure it is a deeply connected ‘people’s conservatoire’.
A year long programme of events will highlight its transformational journey since it started at Cardiff Castle in 1949 and draw attention to the work it does to innovate, champion collaboration, work with communities and empower excellence in all its many forms.
Starting the ‘big birthday’ celebrations, at a public engagement day on February 7th RWCMD presented its reimagining of the newest addition to its campus, Cardiff’s historic Old Library/Yr Hen Lyfrgell, originally the Cardiff Free Arts School and Library.
‘The College’s winning bid for the 99-year lease on the Old Library by the Council last year will establish a lasting residency that will impact each and every one of our next 75 years.
It offers us, as the national conservatoire, an extraordinary – if not unique – opportunity to be understood as a ‘people’s conservatoire’, with our talented students working alongside diverse people and communities to co-create innovative, enjoyable, inspiring performance, and participation opportunities.’Helena GauntRWCMD Principal
In partnership with Flanagan Lawrence, the architects behind RWCMD’s successful and much-admired 2011 capital transformation on Bute Park, the College is now actively raising the £13m that will be needed to fully restore the Old Library. This will create an exceptional second centre from where it will continue to nurture future talent and further develop its pioneering public engagement.
The ambitious plans will both restore and reimagine this beautiful, functional and substantially net zero heritage space, creating flexible performance and workshop spaces, within a widely accessible cultural, artistic and educational hub in the heart of Wales’ capital city.
Old Library, new vision - supporting the cultural ecology of the city
RWCMD’s residency in the Old Library highlights the College’s commitment to empowering its students through their training to develop the skills to become connected and embedded within communities, to be artists who are makers in society, and to bring the performing arts into the cultural fabric of communities.
Key to its success will be building on partnerships and collaboration, with the City of Cardiff and the council, its residents, the existing and developing cultural infrastructure, and with local enterprises. Welcoming the public across its threshold, the Old Library will become a unique place that supports the cultural ecology of the city and helps the College to continue transforming its practice for the 21st century, creating space for possibilities and a provocation to think about how to create work differently.
Join the party and the Big Birthday Appeal
As the College embarks on its 75th birthday year, its venues will be packed with stories that show the creative diversity and world-class quality of the work its arts centre has presented since opening in 2011. It will also be promoting a Big Birthday Appeal, providing opportunities for everyone to contribute to the key projects to help fulfill the College’s highest priority birthday wishes. These include building its fund for bursaries and scholarships, developing more residencies and partnerships with communities and industry, creating exceptional performances, concerts and exhibitions, and further developing a greener and more accessible RWCMD.
Join RWCMD this year as it looks back at all its achieved and look forward to what’s to come.
Photo caption:
Architect Jason Flanagan, RWCMD Principal Helena Gaunt and Shirley Au-Yeung from the Chinese in Wales Association, with RWCMD Design students and the Welsh Dragon project: a partnership project between Chinese in Wales and RWCMD with Arts Council Wales support - and will be featuring at Lunar New Year events throughout this year.
Editors notes
In June 2023, Cardiff Council granted RWCMD a 99-year lease of Cardiff’s Grade II listed Old Library. The Old Library was founded in 1882 as the Cardiff Free Library, Museum and School of Arts and was central to Cardiff’s educational, social and cultural scene for a century before being replaced by a modern library in 1988. The College is reinstating public access to the building, throwing open the doors and inviting everyone to take ownership of the space once more.
