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'Arts and culture are not an optional extra, but foundational to Welsh identity.' Principal Helena Gaunt's on the role of culture in Wales
Having been elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, RWCMD Principal Helena Gaunt's after dinner speech at its Annual Dinner, hosted at the College, focused on culture‘s power to heal, to connect, to empower, and to shape a more humane future for us all:
For me, being elected to the Learned Society of Wales is a very special moment; that I can belong here in Wales means a great deal. Many people have asked me why I came to Wales and I have to say that when I first announced my intention, I was met with some raised eyebrows. But as I approach the end of my eighth year at the College, there is no question but this small and very special nation has won my heart and soul.
I’ve been a musician all my life, though my first degree was in English, and I was a professional oboe player for many years, performing across the world. I taught at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, another conservatoire, for more than 25 years, and slowly built an academic and leadership career there alongside performing.
But something niggled – ‘Mind the gap’.
London’s conservatoires are renowned centres of global excellence in the performing arts, and while extremely proud to work there, I felt I wanted to find a sense of cultural specificity, and a real connection to people and place that would only be possible outside the UK’s capital city.
I was also unsettled by the ways in which our society increasingly seemed to be treating the arts as commodities, and to be losing sight of the values of the art form, of their alignment with the foundations of the arts in social activities in communities and societies.
I was also beginning - if slowly- to recognise some of the inequities within the industries themselves, including challenges I had faced myself as a female musician, teacher, researcher, and senior leader.
Culture and the arts: a foundation of Welsh identity
So I made the decision to do something different, to champion a different approach, and to come to Wales. I had almost no connections here, but I knew it was a nation with deep creative and cultural roots running through language, music, story, and community - the Land of Song, Gwlad y gân.
Caring about the arts and culture now cannot be an optional extra here, they are foundational to Welsh identity, key to economic growth and the ecosystem of the creative industries, key to well-being, living democracy and what it is to be human. And they change young people’s lives – we see that every day here in the College. As Raymond Williams famously said 'culture is ordinary', it belongs to everyone.
Though cultural funding per capita in Wales has slid to the bottom of the European league tables, there is a real opportunity now, as we enter a new era in the Senedd, for the arts and culture to shine properly for this distinctive nation, from the global stage to every living room, from every school to every care home, and outstanding arts centres in between.
I am more than ever ready to support and fight for the arts and the next generations of artists here to create a thriving future – one that is based on both excellence and inclusion, not one or the other, but both, and with the aesthetic and social dimensions of artistic practice properly intertwined. That is what we stand for at the Royal Welsh College. And it feels to me as though there has never been such an important time for it in Wales.
Creative health: Collaboration and Cymru
Which leads me to my second point – collaboration – cydweithio.
The word ‘Cymru’, as I learned from the wonderful poet and linguist Professor Mererid Hopwood, has a Brythonic etymology signaling togetherness. Cymru is about fellow countrymen (the exact opposite of the etymology of the word ‘Wales’).
In these dark and unsettling times globally, more than ever there’s a need for us all to come together across disciplines and boundaries: in mutual respect, collective imagination and action.
One particular agenda that I believe could be transformational for Wales is creative health.
It’s abundantly clear that Wales has already done excellent work in this field and could be world-leading – developing the research, the practice, the workforce, the public policy, social and economic impact in ways few other places are positioned to do. From social prescribing and targeted interventions to healthy ageing, prevention measures, and supporting young people’s engagement in education, the evidence is now incontrovertible – for anyone who hasn’t read Professor Daisy Fancourt’s new book, ‘Art Cure’, it’s a must.
Many of my fellow Learned Society members already touch on these agendas across medicine, sociology, public health, social care, data and policy. But in many ways we have only begun to scratch the surface. And what is missing – and urgently needed in Wales (as everywhere) – is greater coordination, shared ambition, and collaborative strategic planning.
If we can unlock these, the impact will be enormous, because Wales is small and can be agile. Here at the College, the national conservatoire of Wales, we stand ready to play our part.
The power of culture to shape a more humane future for us all
My last point comes back to some of the challenges I’ve faced, relating to structural and personal barriers within my professional sector.
Even now, there are remarkably few female first oboists in orchestras in the UK – or indeed in Europe. Our conservatoires are still predominantly led by men, or perhaps more importantly, are dominated by working and recognition structures originally designed for men.
For much of my working life, as a mother of five, I’ve been constantly juggling work and home, without really being able to speak about it..
What I see now, though, as I come through more than 30 years of mothering is that heroics aren’t sustainable. I’m proud of what I’ve achieved – but I’m also honest enough I hope to say that accepting existing working structures and cultures as the price of ambition isn’t a model I want to pass on, to my children or to the next generation of leaders.
There are many layers and complexities here, but one thing is clear: we are still far from having addressed gender inequity, let alone other forms of inequity, in our institutions.
I must be part of changing that, of supporting women and others from underrepresented groups and less privileged backgrounds to develop their careers, and to do so sustainably without feeling they have to disappear or break themselves in the process.
So this is a time to think ambitiously, and to work collaboratively, in ways that will take this brilliant nation to the world and bring the world back to Wales. In doing so let’s remember that it’s culture – ordinary, extraordinary, shared – that has the power to heal, to connect, to empower, and to shape a more humane future for us all.
