Interview with Mandy Nash about her work with the Makers Guild in Wales and Craft in the Bay, Cardiff

Disgrifiad

Interview with Mandy Nash at Craft in the Bay, 11 October 2016.

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The Chronicle Project is a community heritage project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and run by VCS Cymru with the aims to document the history of volunteering in Cardiff, from 1914 to 2014.

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MN = Mandy Nash

[Introduction - 0:01 to 0:52]

MN: My name is Mandy Nash. I am a jewellery and textile designer, and I took the studio in a model house in the countryside. I moved there from London in 1990. So I’ve been in Wales for 26 years now. I first discovered the Makers’ Guild on a visit to Cardiff. I went into the Old Library where they had their first gallery space. I was very interested in becoming involved, because I just moved to the area and I wanted to meet other craftspeople. So, I asked about how to join and got the information, applied and became a member. So that was in 1991 when I first became a member of the Makers’ Guild in Wales.
[Joining the Makers' Guild - 0:53 to 1:58]
MN: For me, joining the Makers’ Guild was quite, well, very important because I had just moved to the area, I didn’t have many friends. I left a lot of friends behind in London. So for me, it was a way of networking and meeting like-minded people and a way of becoming involved in the craft activity in the South Wales area. Very soon after I joined the Makers’ Guild, I had a phone call from one of the other members who was on the committee, Anna Adam, asking me if I’d like to be exhibitions officer, as I had had experience before organising exhibitions and I had worked for the Crafts Council in London. So, I was a bit taken back by this because I hadn’t long been a member, but I thought it was a good way to meet people and become involved, so I joined the committee as the exhibitions officer.
[Role as exhibitions officer - 2:00 to 3:18]
MN: The role of the exhibitions officer was a voluntary role, and it was basically organising exhibitions for the Makers’ Guild. At that time, we had the gallery in the Old Library, but that was a very temporary affair. We weren’t quite sure how long we were gonna have the space for. So it was important to, for the Guild to exhibit elsewhere.
MN: Over the time that I was the exhibitions officer, we exhibited the [inaudible] over in Camerthen… The exciting thing was that it also took us overseas. We had contacts with Brussels, we exhibited in a gallery in Brussels, we went to Nante as part of an arts festival there. So it really got me involved and got me jumping straight in and it was a wonderful experience as well as being good for my work. It was also a good social source with your friends, and socially it was a good fun thing to do as well.
[Finding Funding - 3:19 to 4:45]
MN: Part of the role was looking for funds to help support the exhibition programme and we did, I did, at that time there was funding available through the Welsh Development Agency. We applied successfully then for some funding and we went to Nante and also for the Arts Council for some small sums of money from the Arts Council. In those days it was much smaller sums of money than it is now. It was good training for me to learn all these new skills because it was something I’d not done before – fundraising. And ironically, the skills I learned through being a voluntary exhibitions officer gave me the opportunity to apply for paid work. So I did work for many years part time doing arts admin, working on arts admin projects. I helped to organise a women’s arts festival, and I organised many events for Craft Forum Wales. With exhibitions in Japan and Barcelona. So that original opportunity working voluntarily gave me skills which I was later able to use to gain employment, which was very good.


[Structure of the organisation - 4:46 to 6:02]
MN: I see volunteering as a way of gaining an insight into how the organisation runs. It’s also, I have quite strong socialist principles, and I feel that you should give back to the community which serves you, and the craft community is very important to me on many levels. So, it also, by volunteering you gain experience, and you meet people, like-minded people. So, it’s a two-way road, I find. If you give, you get back. And since volunteering with the Makers’ Guild in Wales, I also have had roles in the Women’s Arts Association, and recently now, I am vice chair of the International Felt Makers Association, which is another voluntary role, but very important to me, because it takes me all over the country. And I’ve met some wonderful people through doing that.
[Volunteering as part of her life - 6:03 to 7:20]
MN: Over the past twenty-six years, my volunteering, my voluntary roles have become part of my life. I work very hard on my own business, but I see the voluntary roles that I take are also part of my social life and my business, because they open opportunities within my own work. I was chair of the Makers Guild in Wales, and I can’t remember the dates, many many years ago, but I thought it was important, and I do feel quite proud that while I was in the voluntary – within the Makers’ Guild that we did secure vast amounts of funding to create this wonderful space here. And create something that will hopefully last for a very long time.
So I think that as volunteers working together, you’re so much stronger than working as an individual and you can create things that will endure.

[Meeting friends through volunteering - 7:21 to 10:08]
MN: Through my voluntary roles, I’ve met many very good friends. So for me it was a very good way to move to the area of making good contacts. I believe that working as a group, you are much stronger than working as an individual, and that knowledge and contacts and information that gets passed on just by being with other like-minded people. So working as a volunteer is almost like a path into that network. And it also, as a group of people working together you get a far more sense of achievement of what you can do – like creating this gallery. And with my role currently at the International Felt Makers Organisation, has grown considerably. We’ve become far more international, which is our aim, and we’re working on very positive ways of growing the organisation and I think it’s very important to actually achieving something and improving that for other people.

MN: There’s a definite, I think, link with volunteering and improving your social networks and helping your own development and your work. In Wales, a lot of people feel very isolated because it’s a big country and the transport structure, within Wales’ infrastructure isn’t good for actually keeping contact with people. Cardiff is very good because it’s a big city, but as soon as you move out of Cardiff into West Wales and Mid Wales, [inaudible] people there feel very isolated. So having an organisation like the Makers’ Guild that is a central contact is really important for the general crafts community in Wales and do see that there is a point of contact where they can meet like-minded people and share skills and experiences. Certainly, when I lived in London, there was a much more insular environment. What I discovered in Wales, it’s wonderful how people do encourage you and are very keen to work together to create a healthier craft economy and environment to work in.


[Skill sharing and volunteering - 10:09 to 10:56]
MN: As a volunteer, you are encouraged to share skills [inaudible] educating; we’ll put it that way. They don’t realise the time and skill that’s involved in making beautiful objects. So, I think especially within the Makers’ Guild, and also within my role with the International Felt Makers Association, part of the role is to educate the public on the traditional craft skills and [inaudible].

[Best memories - 10:57 to 12:26]
MN: I think some of the best memories I have is when we, was when the guild, was offered the use of the old Techniquest shed. We were desperately looking for new premises, when we heard that our lease in the Old Library was going to expire, and we thought then that Cardiff Bay, which was at the time a building site, and not a very attractive place to visit, but it’s changed considerably in the last 15-20 years. But we were somehow managed to, we were given the use of the old Techniquest shed. And it was huge, and we were ‘oh my goodness, how are we going to create a gallery within this space’, because it was just an old shed really. But it was a fantastic experience. All the guild members came together to clean it, to dust it, to paint it, to beg, borrow, and steal display equipment and materials. And it was fun as well as hard work to actually turn that space into a gallery. I think that was a real brilliant achievement that we did that.

[Issues with volunteering, committees, and fairness - 12:28 to 14:40]
MN: One of the problems of organisations run by volunteers is that they are run by committees, decisions by committees, everything needs to be democratically fair. You need to have an elected committee to run an organisation, especially if it’s a charity or not-for-profit. But at the same time that does slow things down somewhat, in that you need to have endless meetings to make decisions before you can actually go ahead and do anything. And coming from a person that works for themselves in their own business, I just make a decision and I go for it. I don’t have to consult anybody else, before I do that. It can be frustrating at times with the endless committee meetings and then finding that a decision has been deferred until the next meeting as you are itching to go ahead and get on with the next project. But saying that, if that structure wasn’t in place, then nothing would happen because it would be kind of chaotic.

MN: I stood down from all the committees that I was on several years ago. I was a trustee, I was also the education officer supporting the paid exhibitions officer, Charlotte Kingston. I just felt that I had been involved with the Maker’s Guild for many, many years and the way to get newer and younger people involved was to actually stand down totally. Because I think one of the problems with being a volunteer is that anybody that is willing to do the work is just allowed to get on with it and the only way to find replacements is to disappear from the scene and then somebody else has to take on the work. Also I’ve become involved with the International Felt Makers’ Association so I have to kind of limit the amount of hours I work voluntarily because I’ve got to run my own business.

[Role as the education officer - 14:42 to 15:35]
MN: I took over the education officer role after I was exhibitions officer because we are only supposed to be in a role for three years. And I took over the education side of things when we were in the Corys Building, which we moved to after we moved to the Techniquest Shed. We had spaces there to run workshops. And so my role then was to organise a workshop programme, produce the leaflets, distribute them. Ultimately, I applied for a grant from the Arts Council, which was successful, so we could employ Charlotte. [inaudible]

[Trustees role - 15:37 to 16:55]
MN: The trustee’s role was far more official. The Makers’ Guild Committees, when we obtained funding, the whole situation had to change, and had to become far more official in the way that we set up our structure. We became a charity and it was very complex, there were two committees. It took us a while to figure out the running structure from being a just not-for-profit organisation to actually being a constituted charity. So mu trustee’s role was much more official in that we had to not so much act for the Makers’ but to ensure that the building we now own was run in a charitable format. We had to run exhibitions as well as the educational program. So it was not just for the profit of the members. So it was quite a different role to that when I originally started working as a volunteer. Very different. Much more formal.

[The Makers' Guild as a charity with full-time staff - 16:56 to 19:18]
MN: The Makers’ Guild changed dramatically once we became a charity and we started employing full-time staff. Because previously to that it was run entirely by volunteers with just one full-time member of staff and then we had a part time administrator once we had further funding. So over the years, the whole way that the guild is run has changed by not being run by the members anymore, but actually being run by the trustees and paid staff. So, which is a bit sad, I find it quite sad in that we’ve lost that community feeling that we had when we were just run by the guild members, which was far more social and fun and… I think because the members were actually involved personally, they had, they felt more ownership over the whole situation, whereas now, it’s different, we’ve lost that sense of community and the social engagement that we used to have.
MN: I think the Makers’ Guild is a totally different concept that when it started initially in 1984. Not that that’s a bad thing, because it’s a totally different ideal now that we have a totally wonderful gallery that we own. I think we’ve got one of the better spaces in Wales showing contemporary craft made in Wales. I think we have international status. It’s just different now, to have this space opposite the Wales Millennium Centre, within Cardiff Bay which has become, to what it was when we first moved down here, it was just a building site, very muddy and drab. I think being part of this vibrant area is incredible, which we wouldn’t have foreseen when we were in the Old Library in Cardiff.

[Makers Guild members and support -19:20 to 20:33]
MN: The Makers Guild members need to work here during the year in the gallery because without their support we still, we don’t make enough money to pay full-time staff to run the space. So without the support of the guild members, we still wouldn’t be able to run this place efficiently, so all of us have to steward for allocated times of the year, depending on how far you live from the gallery. I steward 7 days a year, and some of the members don’t like stewarding, but I really enjoy it because it’s a chance to meet other members, see what’s going on, seeing the exhibitions. And running my own business is quite intensive and I have to think hard on what I’m going to do each day. And a day here is like a day off, I can just do as I am told, dust, and clean, and serve people and it’s nice to see the customers to see them and get feedback from what they like and generally it’s very appreciative of this wonderful space to see all this lovely work made in Wales.


[Role as vice chair within the International Felt Makers' Association - 20:34 to 21:28]
MN: My role as vice chair within the International Felt Makers’ Association, at the moment, comprises mostly of me supporting our chairman. Our chairman is actually based in Switzerland and our organisation is UK-based. So I have to do a lot of work within the UK to support her. The main thing that I am working on at the moment is working with website designers creating a new website which will hopefully encourage a lot more new members because it will be internationally – it’s a way of groups of people keeping in contact and it’s good to be doing a much more interactive website. So it’s good to be doing that. That should be up and running in November.


[Volunteering and friends - 21:29 to 22:58]
MN: Volunteering for me, has, well it’s been wonderful in that I’ve made lots of friends when I moved to the area, and there’s a sense of achievement in what we’ve actually created and also I’ve learned lots of new skills by volunteering. These days I think it’s harder to find – we should encourage younger people to work as volunteers, because I think the culture for volunteering is fading away slightly, which is a shame. I think older people have been brought up with more of a culture of volunteering and being part of the community and creating the community. I always talk to people and say that if I hadn’t volunteered I wouldn’t have learned how to apply for funding, curate exhibitions, work as part of a team. It’s taught me lots of skills which I’ve been able to put on my CV and get paid work for. I am a great advocate for volunteering. I think what you get from being a volunteer exceeds the small cost of unpaid time.

[Encouraging others to volunteer - 22:59 to 24:16]
MN: Working as a volunteer and trying to encourage more people to volunteer is always a bit of a problem. Because if you just ask, and say ‘oh I want some volunteers’ no one will be courageous enough to put their hand up. But I’ve discovered that if you ask people to do something and its part of what they enjoy doing – say for example, somebody is good at math and likes working with figures, and you say ‘can you prepare a budget for this’ they probably will say yes, because it’s something they enjoy doing and they feel useful. I think people generally like to be made to feel useful. So I’ve learned that the best way to get people to volunteer is to give them a task they enjoy doing and they can see the end result and they can see that it’s achieved something bigger than they would have done by themselves. So I think that’s my tip on how to encourage people to volunteer is to put them into a situation where they can’t say no.