This petition is being organised by the staff, trustees and volunteers of Wyeside Arts Centre.

Background:

There is ample evidence to show that Wyeside Arts Centre is an extremely efficient and effective arts venue, offering its funders and customers excellent financial and cultural value.

We have been explaining a crucial need for a relatively modest increase in revenue support for nearly ten years, to no avail. Instead we have been obliged to do everything possible to keep Wyeside open, involving considerable compromises at a cost to staff, patrons and our artistic aspirations. We have now reached the point where we can simply no longer continue without the improved revenue support we have been requesting.

The Arts Council of Wales sent its Senior Grants Monitoring Officer to review our finances last year. His report said: “margins have been squeezed to their potential maximum and this includes backroom staff at a bare minimum... the procedures followed are of best practice”. He also confirmed our need for extra revenue support.

This report had to be ‘leaked’ to our Assembly Member in order for us to see it. The Arts Council will not explain why they will not discuss the findings of their own report, even though it confirms that we have been achieving what they were specifically requesting of us as a condition of improved support.

Wyeside promotes and manages over 800 arts and cultural events a year. We operate 7 days – av. 85 hours - a week, open to the public 6 days a week; with an average 40,000 visits per year. Yet we can only afford three full time members of staff; the rest of us are part time, casual or volunteer. Nevertheless last year Wyeside became only the third arts centre in Wales to be awarded Investors in People status, with commendations for our achievements. Their assessor also confirmed our need for improved support.

Wyeside Arts Centre has been denied the significant levels of public subsidy awarded to comparable venues in Powys and Wales. There is an increasingly stark disparity in levels of public investment. We have asked for an explanation but none has been offered. We have asked our public funders to make a ‘best value’ audit and compare Wyeside with other arts venues, but they have been reluctant to do so; even though the National Assembly has also previously asked for comparisons to be made in the interests of best value.

Over the past five years Wyeside Arts Centre has managed to promote an average 60 live performances a year for an average £4,200 a year in subsidy; offering extraordinary value and demonstrating effective management. The Arts Council of Wales has an extra £1.5 million a year to support live show programmes in venues outside of Cardiff. Some theatres have been granted over £100,000 a year extra to support their programmes. Wyeside has been denied any support whatsoever from this fund. In Wales there are no clear rationales for the public agencies’ methods of investing the public’s money in Arts venues.

Wyeside is a victim of very poor administration of public money for the arts. At a time when public money for the arts is under such pressure it should not be unfair to expect our public agencies to invest our money prudently. They should be accountable for ensuring best value, rewarding best practice and meeting their priorities efficiently and effectively.

Direct appeals from the Chairmen of Wyeside to the Chairmen and Chief Executives of Powys County Council and the Arts Council of Wales to discuss our plight have been refused. Please help us to urge the Minister for Heritage to intervene and help us save the Wyeside Arts Centre, which has been providing a significant arts service for thirty years and a home to Wales’ longest-running cinema. There is no good reason why this excellent, much-valued arts centre should be forced to close.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Guy Roderick

Artistic & Executive Director

Wyeside Arts Centre

Unless we can reverse their decision, it will result in the loss of:

- St Donats Arts Centre and cinema for people in the Vale of Glamorgan, the UK and abroad.

- Up to 326 arts events in a festival year (up to 180 in a non festival year) as well as workshops, outreach work and educational arts programmes generating over 53,000 attendances.

- Wales’ International Storytelling Festival, the only one of its kind in Wales and the largest in the UK. In 2007, this comprised over 80 performances from over 60 Welsh and international storytellers and attracted 1662 visitors from Wales, Britain and abroad. The festival includes a programme of education, touring and outreach work. Last year, we promoted 111 performances and educational workshops to just under 4,000 children, young people and the elderly in the Vale of Glamorgan and other areas of disadvantage including Barry, Rhondda Cynon Taff, Merthyr, Ferndale, Newport and Swansea. The festival also runs monthly performances in the Wales Millennium Centre and a nationwide tour with an estimated audience of 3,660.

- An annual programme of educational events for people from 5 years to 95 years old in schools, colleges, hospitals, prisons and community venues.

- Other educational events including adult life-long learning workshops and classes for retired and other people and film education days for schoolchildren.

- Over £83,000 worth of business spent on companies in south Wales each year amounting to an estimated £2.5million spent in the life of the arts centre.

- An estimated £138,500 spent by festival attenders on travel companies, retailers and accommodation providers in south Wales. This figure is multiplied many times by attenders of our craft fayres, weddings and conferences and open-air summer performances.

The proposal would mean transferring 1,000 births to Chester and a further 1,100 births to Ysbyty Glan Clwyd with just 600 remaining in Wrexham.

Closing these pools is a short-sighted decision. It will mean fewer children learn to swim, with potentially tragic results. It will reduce opportunities for exercise for young and old alike at a time when we are meant to be combatting inactivity.

The council is cutting back on frontline services without tackling its own bureaucracy and overspending.

Anglesey Aluminium have decided to sell the entire area to a leisure development company, including Penrhos which is 200 acres. Land and lakes have entered into an option agreement with AA, their proposal involves building a holiday camp on the entire woodland area which means Penrhos nature reserve would cease to exist destroying the unique unspoilt habitat. The public would be prohibited from this area.

Destroying the unspoilt landscape could effect the type of tourism we have on this island: we are at risk of losing our unique selling point our ‘Natural capital’.We would like to invite people to sign this petition to prevent the development.

Byddai hyn yn golygu trosglwyddo cannoedd o famau beichiog o Wynedd a Mon i Ysbyty Glan Clwyd ac ymhellach.

Galwn ar Fwrdd Iechyd Betsi Cadwaladr a Llywodraeth Cymru i sicrhau gwasanaeth mamolaeth gyflawn yn y tri ysbyty cyffredinol ar draws y Gogledd.

We, the undersigned, oppose any proposal to close consultant-led maternity services at Ysbyty Gwynedd.

The proposal would mean transferring hundreds of expectant mothers to Ysbyty Glan Clwyd and beyond.

We call on Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board to retain comprehensive maternity services at all three district hospitals.

You may have heard there has been a proposed offer by a company called Land and Lakes for the site of Penrhos nature park.

This petition is for the backing of this development and to help show our support for the plans and in doing so create jobs for Holyhead.

There is growing demand for Welsh-medium education in Wrexham and we call on the Council to assess future demand by conducting a survey similar to that in 2007, when parents of two-year-old children in the county were questioned. This showed that 44% of parents would send their children to a Welsh-medium school if it was within two miles of their home. As a result Ysgol Bro Alun was built to accommodate the demand but it is now already oversubscribed.

(One of the best and beautiful countries in Europe should have their flag next to Mrs jones' selfie!)

This will have a huge impact on people travelling to and from work in the town, visiting relations in the hospital and generally allowing people to get out and about.