Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:47 pm on 7 June 2022.
Minister, I was very grateful for your meeting with Urban Circle, a grass-roots arts and cultural organisation in Newport who do a great deal of good work in the community around music, dance and culture to bring communities together and to support diversity and equality. Just this summer now, as you would know from our meeting, they're taking forward a very ambitious programme to have a reggae and riddim concert in Newport, in Tredegar House in Newport, which will be one of the official events to mark the sixtieth anniversary of independence for Jamaica. So, it'll be music, it'll be dance, they'll have a museum, a temporary museum, constructed on site, and it will help very much to connect the whole of Wales, really, not just the Newport area, with Jamaica to a greater extent.
I know you believe, as I do, that it's very important that we make these international connections as part of our efforts to be diverse, to connect with other cultures, to understand the cultural backgrounds of people living in Wales and to get Wales out there, really, on the international scene, to make Wales better known as part of our efforts to open up Wales to the world and the world to Wales. So, I think this event is very, very important, Minister, and I was very pleased that you gave it fulsome backing when we met, because it's just one example, really, but a very strong and good one, of the work that Urban Circle do in Newport in our ethnically diverse communities, but also to make those wider connections. So, I'm sure you will join me today, Minister, in applauding the work of Urban Circle, welcoming this, I think, very significant event this summer and wishing Urban Circle and those who work with them all the best in the future for this really valuable work.