7. Statement by the Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism: Creative Wales

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:29 pm on 30 April 2019.

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Photo of Mike Hedges Mike Hedges Labour 6:29, 30 April 2019

Firstly, animation: in the early 1990s, Wales experienced a golden age of animation production. S4C was integral in helping to produce a number of popular animated shows—SuperTed, Fireman Sam, sung by a friend of mine, Mal Pope, Gogs. These are just some of the shows produced, high-profile shows commissioned and produced by S4C, and produced in Wales, and then translated into English. I watched them as a parent. I'm sure some of the people here actually watched them as children, so please don't tell me you did. [Laughter.] But today what we tend to do is watch things like Peppa Pig dubbed into Welsh.

S4C rapidly gained a reputation, nationally and internationally, for their commercially successful and award-winning animation programmes developed—as S4C expanded, a host of popular characters, such as Wil Cwac Cwac, Toucan Tecs, and Funnybones. Over the years, S4C made longer cartoons and animations based on famous operas, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and stories from the Bible. We were hugely successful. What does the Minister intend to do to revive the Welsh animation industry?

The second area I wish to ask questions about is computer games. The world's biggest selling video game, which, if you didn't know, is Grand Theft Auto, started life in Dundee, as in the last 20 years the Scottish city has developed a notable cluster for the world's video games industry. Dundee has no great advantage geographically over similar sized conurbations in Wales like Swansea and Newport. There's no great thing that, 'This is Dundee, it's bound to be successful.' They developed that. We need to do the same. This is the biggest of all the creative industries. Despite the video games industry bringing in £1.4 billion for the UK economy, we have failed to develop in Wales a successful computer video games industry. If I've got it wrong, I'm sure the Minister will tell me the video games that are in the world's top 20 that are produced in Wales. How does the Minister intend to promote and develop a video games industry in Wales as successful as those in lots of other places?

There's no great care of where you are developing video games. You can develop them anywhere in the world as long as you've got access to the internet, because now things don't actually exist on disks anymore, do they—some of us remember them—they actually just are downloads. So, there are great opportunities for anywhere, rural or urban. So, what are we going to do to try and develop an industry? We have the universities teaching people the skills that are necessary for computer games. They have computer games courses in some universities in Wales. So, how are we going to turn those graduates of computer games into successes in Wales so we can be up there, not competing with some of the great cities in America, but just competing with Dundee?