7. Statement by the Deputy Minister for Arts and Sport, and Chief Whip: Culture and Heritage Update: Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic History, Culture and Heritage

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:31 pm on 7 June 2022.

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Photo of Dawn Bowden Dawn Bowden Labour 4:31, 7 June 2022

Can I thank Tom Giffard for those many questions? I'm not sure that I've got all of them, Tom, but I'll try and wrap it all up in an overarching response. If I can deal first with the culture grant scheme that you were talking about initially. What we are looking to do, really, is to introduce a scheme in readiness to launch in the coming weeks. So, the detail of that is still being worked on, and I will be back in this Chamber with more information on that in due course. I think I've set out in my statement the three strands of that, and that was covered in part of your question, but I don't have the detail of that yet—that is being developed and we will be bringing it back. But one of the key elements of that is to ensure that some of the smaller groups, who we have had quite a lot of criticism for across the cultural sector—they find it very difficult to access grant funding, because they are small, because they don't have the experience of having staff that work on grant applications all the time and so on. Those kind of organisations won't find themselves in competition with big organisations that are coming in for that particular pot of money. So, there will be a very specific pot, a very specific element of that funding pot, which will be aimed at those other organisations. But they will be setting out and helping us to deliver what we see as very ambitious goals. Now, you will ask the question, 'What are the ambitious goals?' Well, the ambitious goals are, clearly, to create an anti-racist Wales. Now, I'm not going to stand here, as the Minister for Social Justice isn't standing here, saying that we can do that overnight. But we have to start with the institutions that we have some responsibility for, that we can influence, that we can work with and that Welsh Government money goes into. So, those are the organisations that we are working with in particular.

I think the point that you have made around decolonisation is a very fair one in terms of who do we look at, what do we say is important. And that has been very much the work of the Legall audit—it started a couple of years ago—when we looked across Wales at place names, monuments, paintings, statues, whatever it might have been, which have some connection to our colonial past and the slave trade. Now, some of those links are more tenuous than others, and I think that was the point that you were alluding to, but I think what the Legall audit was trying to do was to identify that there were a raft of people that we needed to acknowledge had those links. Those links may have been, as I say, tenuous, those links may not have been substantial in the context.

You talked about Richard Trevithick who, of course, is very important to my constituency. But I also think of people like Robert Owen, who was a great philanthropist, socialist, trade unionist, and one of the founding members of the co-operative movement—some tenuous links to the slave trade that actually didn't in and of themselves negate all the really good work that he did. But there is an acknowledgement that there was some link, because he used the labour of slaves in the Caribbean to bring cotton to the UK, to Wales, to run his business, so we have to acknowledge all of that. And the work that has come out of the Legall audit with the group that has now been set up, which is being headed by Marian Gwyn, is facilitating how we commemorate these people looking forward. It's not for us to determine how we commemorate them, it is for local communities, and for the black, Asian and minority ethnic communities themselves to be very much part of building those recommendations that we will give to public bodies and other organisations that wish to commemorate, whether that's in our museums, our art galleries, our libraries, whatever it might be. If they are going to display works, if they are going to display exhibitions, if they are going to display art, if they are going to tell a story, then they have to tell the story in context. And that is the work that Marian Gwyn is doing on behalf of Welsh Government, following on from the Legall audit. So, it won't be for us to tell anybody how that should be done, it will be for those people to be telling us, those stakeholders to be telling us. And they will produce recommendations and that will go forward for public consultation, so the wider public will also have the opportunity to have their say as far as all of that is concerned.

Sporting aspects: what I would say, Tom Giffard, is that I haven't used today's statement specifically to deal with sport. There will be other opportunities for me to come back and deal with sport; I did concentrate my statement today particularly on culture and heritage. But what I would say is that we do strongly support the work that Sport Wales is doing with UK Sport, with Sport England, with SportScotland and Sport Northern Ireland to tackle racism and racial inequalities across all four nations to develop a collective plan, and we're very much part of building that sporting community that's reflective of the societies that all of our Governments represent. They are key elements of the work to eradicate racism in Wales, you're quite right, and that is all set out in their remit letters from me. And I think it's important to say, because I think it was a point that Sioned raised earlier on in terms of accountability, all of the sponsored bodies that Welsh Government funds have had remit letters setting out very clearly what is expected of them. They are accountable to me for that, and in turn, I am accountable to this Senedd for that. And that will be the route that we will follow and make sure that that accountability is followed through and that those actions are delivered.