Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:53 pm on 22 October 2019.
Well, thank you very much for that, Rhianon, and I appreciate your passion for placing Welsh music at the heart of the attractiveness of the country. And, in a sense, you have anticipated a future statement I hope to be making on establishing Creative Wales. Because I do believe that when we will have Creative Wales to sit alongside the Welsh arts council, and to sit alongside the particular contribution that is made to the life of Wales by the support that we currently give to the film and television industry, and the digital industry generally—that is a centrepiece of Creative Wales—we can see these different national institutions working even more closely together.
I am looking at a way of establishing Creative Wales on a model similar to Cadw. So, that’s a good start. We take a way of working that I believe to be working in the context of the built heritage, with a relatively autonomous board, but within Welsh Government, and that is the model that we will have for Creative Wales. Creativity has to be celebrated in a way that recognises the skills of creative workers, but it must also be celebrated in a way that seeks to treat creativity as a public good and an economic good. And that is why it is important that the emphasis of Creative Wales follows the kind of emphasis that we have used for Visit Wales. In other words, it has to be an organisation with a commercial drive, as well as a drive in more traditional perceptions of culture. I hope that goes some way to giving you a reassurance before we continue a further discussion on that aspect.
But all these—they're not institutions, they're enabling bodies. All these enabling bodies are part of what creates the attractiveness of the country. That's why the work that I'm waiting for at the moment, where Sport Wales and health promotion Wales have been working alongside Natural Resources Wales—this is a model that I hope will develop for the future, so that we are not working in terms of Government bodies that are not looking across the whole of Government for their activity.