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This exciting programme brings together writers and journalists from Wales with their counterparts in Washington, DC. Designed to develop coverage and critical discussion of Welsh arts. The intensive workshops will develop participants’ critical abilities and result in increased coverage and critical discussion in print, broadcast and new media of the arts in Wales.
The Welsh Arts Critics Programme is a Visiting Arts programme run in partnership with Wales Arts International and British Council, and supported as part of Wales’ activities in Washington, DC by the Welsh Assembly Government, which will begin on May 23 in Cardiff.
Three Washington-based critics, Ashley Lindstrom, David MacFadden-Elliott and Rebecca J. Ritzel, will join Siân Melangell Dafydd, Menna Machreth and Karen Owen (biographies listed below) in Wales from Sunday 24 to Friday 29 May to participate in the first of two workshops in the exchange programme.
The six writers will participate in facilitated writing sessions and mentoring with established arts critics Linda Christmas, Elizabeth Mahoney, Jon Gower and Rian Evans, as well as attending a range of cultural events. The workshops will encourage the participants to write reviews on the work they see throughout the week, discuss their writing together and explore the role of the art critic. The multi-disciplinary programme of events they will attend includes a Bryn Terfel concert, a day at the Hay-on-Wye festival, a concert by Mexican guitarist Morgan Szymanski, visits to the National Museum Cardiff and G39, and an afternoon at Urdd Eisteddfod, Wales’ cultural youth festival.
This initial workshop will be followed by a visit to Washington between June 23-29, where the three Welsh participants will regroup with the Washington-based participants and undergo a similar programme in the USA, specifically focusing on the coverage of Welsh activity in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2009.
was bought up at the foot of the Berwyn mountain, North Wales and educated at Ysgol y Berwyn, Y Bala. She graduated with a degree in History of Art from St Andrews University in 2000 and then returned to University in 2005 to complete an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Her professional career spans from working in sculpture gallery in Chianti to being the Marketing Manager for the new writing company, Sgript Cymru. Siân writes fiction and poetry as well as arts criticism and occasionally appears on S4C’s ‘Sioe Gelf (‘Arts Show’) as a guest speaker. She was one of the principal contributors to ‘Hon: Ynys y Galon’ (‘Island of the Heart’), a book exploring the symbolic otherworld of Gwales and other islands in the work of Welsh artist, Iwan Bala. Having been awarded the Academi’s Writers’ Bursary 2008, she is completing her novel.
is a research student in the University of Bangor, studying national identity in poetry from Wales (Welsh and English) after 1979. Menna is originally from Llanddarog, Carmarthenshire and was educated in Maes-yr-Yrfa Comprehensive School in the Gwendraeth Valley and graduated from Aberystwyth University in 2006 with a BA (Hons) in Welsh. She was elected President of UMCA (Undeb Myfyrwyr Cymraeg Aberystwyth / Welsh Language and Learners Student Union of Aberystwyth) between 2006-2007 where she co-ordinated campaigns and student activities. Menna went on to study for am MA in the School of Welsh before being awarded an AHRC grant to study for a PhD. In 2008, she was appointed editor of Welsh Language arts magazine for young adults, Tu Chwith. Menna is also the Chair of the Welsh Language Society (Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg).
is an arts critic who has spent most of his column space on hip-hop and rock music. He began writing freelance food and nightlife criticism in New York in early 2004 before landing his first internship at The Source that fall. He moved to San Francisco in 2007 and worked for most of 2008 as an assistant editor at Crawdaddy! before returning to school to pursue arts criticism studies. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a master’s degree in Specialized Journalism in May 2009. His work has appeared in Wax Poetics, The Source, Crawdaddy!, SF Weekly, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. David has also had three short screenplays turned into films and recently wrote his first film score.
is a freelance arts journalist who has written for more than a dozen North American magazines and newspapers. She regularly contributes dance and music criticism to The Washington Post. Earlier in her career, she spent five years as a staff writer at the Intelligencer Journal in Lancaster, Pa. In 2006, she earned a master's degree in arts journalism from Syracuse University. The following year, she received a theater journalism fellowship from the University of Southern California and the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts. Rebecca now lives in Alexandria, Va. A rather athletic arts critic, she enjoys running, kayaking and horseback riding. She also teaches in the creative writing program at American University. Links to her recent writings for the Post--and other publications--can be found at www.rjritzel.com
Linda Christmas's career as a journalist spans regional newspapers, national newspapers (The Guardian) radio and television (BBC's Newsnight). For 15 years she was director of the post-graduate course in newspaper journalism at City University, London. She is now senior advisor to the Guardian Foundation, a post that involves training journalists around the world. Most recently she has spent three months in Muscat, Oman.
The arts have been a major interest all her life. During her 11 years with the Guardian she wrote endlessly about various art forms - but rarely as a critic. However, she had 23 years of private tuition in the role and the skills of a critic: she was married to John Higgins, Arts Editor of Financial Times and The Times.
As well as the music criticism which has always been central to her career, Rian Evans has worked extensively in television and radio, primarily in arts and cultural programmes. She was also Arts and Welsh-language editor at the Western Mail for a period acknowledged to have achieved wider and more in-depth coverage in these fields than before or since. It involved working all day and most of the night, crazy but fun. Rian now writes for The Guardian, for Opera magazine and the online magazine, Classical Source, also for The Strad, Musical Opinion, the New Welsh Review among other periodicals.
Rian’s own training as a musician – as a performer as well as in academic research – helps inform her perspective as a critic, though she likes to think that her interest in psychology and in complementary health therapies might sometimes have a bearing on her approach. Rian also has a major commitment to the visual arts and has written frequently about major Welsh artists such as Ceri Richards and Kyffin Williams, contributing to the Royal Academy’s volume on the latter as well as to the Gregynog Press’s recent book on contemporary Welsh art.
Jon Gower is a writer and critic who has ten books to his name including 'An Island Called Smith' which won the John Morgan travel writing award. He was BBC Wales arts and media correspondent between 2000 and 2006. Jon is the recipient of a major Creative Wales award for 2009-2010.
Elisabeth Mahoney is an arts critic on The Guardian, covering radio, theatre and visual art, and has worked on the paper’s arts pages for ten years. She has also worked as art critic on The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday, as Senior Feature Writer at The Sunday Times, and as restaurant critic and columnist for The Herald Magazine. Elisabeth is a Tutor in the Media Studies department at Swansea University where she teaches journalism practice at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
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