Brief Encounters
Veronica Simpson catches up with the creators of Ty Pawb’s unique ecosystem in Wrexham.
IT’S ALWAYS HEARTENING to revisit a project that has won its place at the core of a community, and hear how it has evolved and adapted to remain vital and relevant. As I’ve learned over many years of writing about architecture, a good public building needs not just the skill and ingenuity of the architect in creating a structure that fits the stakeholders’ aspirations and purpose, but also really good, inspired programming.
Children enjoying the Grayson Perry exhibit in 2019.
Ty Pawb in Wrexham struck me as a remarkable project when I first wrote about it after it opened back in 2018: a contemporary art gallery inserted into an unlovely, concrete, 1980s multi-storey car park that also serves as a market hall for its North Wales community. What I liked about the way architects Featherstone Young had approached their intervention included the robust and adaptable simplicity of its form and materials, underpinned by architect Sarah Featherstone’s memorable ‘baggy fit’ ethos. And, also, its porosity: its state-of-the-art, climate-controlled Gallery 1 offers an environment appropriate for even the most precious and fragile artefacts, including Grayson Perry’s tapestries, which were displayed there in 2019. But it isn’t just gallery-visitors who enjoyed the richness and wit of his creations: thanks to the generous windows sliced into its walls, market traders and passing customers have tantalising views into the gallery. That sense of connectivity between the gallery’s interior and exterior spaces is followed throughout the project, establishing both its character and a spirit of friendly dialogue between shoppers and culture vultures.
A clear marker of Ty Pawb’s success this year was being shortlisted for the Art Fund Museum of the Year prize, alongside London’s Horniman Museum and Gardens, Derby’s Museum of Making, Oxford’s Story Museum and Manchester’s Peoples History Museum. The biggest museum prize in the world, the £100,000 winner’s pot went to the Horniman. But the morning after the awards event at London’s Design Museum, Featherstone and both Ty Pawb’s artistic director Jo Marsh and curator Karen Whittingham were in remarkably good spirits as we chatted on Zoom. Says Marsh: ‘It really has done a lot for us already in terms of profile and media coverage.’ The award shortlisting has boosted visits from the museum sector, as well as from architects and architecture students. Marsh adds: ‘The director general of the Imperial War Museum, who was a judge, came to visit. And she kept saying how wonderful and unusual it was – especially for its ability to attract an audience to the arts that galleries wouldn’t normally reach.’
The gallery, as seen from inside the market. Image Credit: JAMES MORRIS
That’s partly thanks to Ty Pawb being fully integrated into the ground floor market plan – not just socially, as with that porous arrangement, but thanks to a consistent visual palette of materials between the market stalls’ timber ply structures and furniture, and that of the gallery. This openness and accessibility draws people in to engage in all the workshops and events Marsh and Whittingham have curated in the four years since it opened. And as these communities have changed the functions of the spaces, so they have adapted to fit their new purposes, true to Featherstone’s ‘baggy fit’ ideology.
Ty Pawb is itself fully integrated into the ground floor market plan as part of a consistent visual palette of materials. Image Credit: PETER WILLLIAMS
For starters, Gallery 2, which sits at the centre of Ty Pawb, has become a popular Useful Art Space, for hosting massively successful play and creativity sessions with kids of all ages. Furthermore, the shop, which is the first space you encounter directly from the market hall is now where a range of Maker activities take place, helping to hatch new businesses for advanced hobbyists, artists and a whole new wave of market traders. Several of the new small, craft or design businesses emerged from the weekly ‘Make Yourself At Home’ project for refugees and asylum seekers, who get to show off their considerable craft and making skills while practicing their English. Says Marsh: ‘People feel this making is now a part of Wrexham’s identity – we were a market town, now a market city. What it gives us is the opportunity to develop things in workshops and literally take them to market.’ During the two worst pandemic years, the flexibility and accessibility of stall pricing has been invaluable. Where a couple of long-standing traders were lost, there have been as many if not more new businesses arriving.
As well as cultivating local entrepreneurs, one of the centre’s biggest successes has been in attracting families through the multiple activities aimed at children and young people. Play was established as a core part of Ty Pawb’s DNA from when Turner prize winners Assemble came here in 2019 and, together with local artists and participants, transformed the gallery into a full-scale adventure playground. Now there are two play workers who manage weekly play sessions in the Useful Art Space. Says Marsh: ‘Children, young people and families are the lifeblood of Ty Pawb. Probably the most important thing we contribute locally is a space for families. We provide low-cost activities for children and young people to enjoy. Sometimes adults struggle to get their heads around Ty Pawb – how does it fit in to the mix? But for children, they just get it. They’re not making any distinction. They’re going to be the next generation, bringing their children here.’
The ‘Julie Cope’s Grand Tour’ exhibition was created by contemporary artist Grayson Perry, showcasing the life of the eponymous fictional Essex everywoman. Image Credit: TY PAWB
Ultimately, the centre has truly lived up to its name – Ty Pawb is Welsh for ‘everyone’s house’. And new parts of the car park are being absorbed into the programme, just as Featherstone hoped, including a roof garden which is taking shape along a second floor terrace. Says Marsh: ‘It grew out of a conversation with our Portuguese elder community, who use our maker space but who are also involved in the roof garden project.’ Thanks to an Arts Council Wales grant called Connect and Flourish, a new structure will be built along this terrace by local artist John Marel, to form an experimental growing space run by the burgeoning community of gardeners. And this, in turn, has inspired a show scheduled for the gallery, Horizon Garden, which explores community and alternative growing as a response to issues including social isolation, food poverty and climate change. It will open in January 2023. The inspirational loop comes full circle.
