Only a week to go!

After two years of planning and hard work by a lot of people, we are now just one week away from the opening of the National Eisteddfod in Ebbw Vale. Everything now seems to be in place and those of us who will be working there throughout the week (in the underground art gallery, in my case) will be touring the site tomorrow. At the official opening of Y Lle Celf (The Art Space) next Saturday, I will be making a short speech and presenting the prizes for fine art and architecture. For the rest of the eight days, I will be working as a steward in Y Lle Celf and sometimes in other parts of the Maes.

Today, I will be putting up some bunting outside my house - the only person in our street of about 100 houses to do so, and one of the very few in the whole town. 20,000 free tickets were given away in this area in a bid to attract local people, but it feels to me at the moment as though most of the 150,000 expected visitors will be coming from outside the Valleys, from the Welsh-speaking areas. Well, apart from all the other things to look forward, there will be a chance at last to speak Welsh all day every day for a solid week.

In the pink

When it was first announced two years ago that the National Eisteddfod of Wales was coming to Ebbw Vale for the first time since 1958, the news was very exciting in itself. Little did I imagine that I was to be Chair of the Visual Arts Sub-committee, which is in charge of organising the two art exhibitions and peripheral art events that are an essential part of this great annual festival of Welsh language and culture.

Well, yesterday, from my bedroom window I watched the erection of the huge Main Pavilion of the Eisteddfod on the former steel works site (I'd watched the five-year-long demolition of the works from the same window). The pavilion has been bright pink for the past few Eisteddfodau - something that's not to everyone's taste, but it was a very bold and uncompromising choice, reflecting the triumphant mood of the great event.

Only four weeks to go to the opening and it will be fascinating to see how the local populace will react. This is not an area noted for its Cymreictod ('Welshness') and it is not known how many of the expected 150,000 visitors will be local, or indeed how a town of 30.000 will react to an unprecedented flood of visitors on that scale. The signs are that local shops are just not gearing up to take advantage. No-one has managed to get across to them what is to come. Those of us closely involved with this year's 'National' are hoping that the coming of it to our town will provide a boost to the language, the economy, the arts and the general level of confidence in the area. All four are certainly in urgent need of boosting. But we must wait and see.

But to go back to Y Lle Celf, the visual arts show, the nature of the site has enabled my sub-committee to pull off a first this year and something which is surely destined to remain unique. Instead of taking placed in the usual visual arts pavilion, the it will mainly be in the vast underground 'bunker' that was formerly the stack annealer, where rolled steel was hardened and strengthened. When the steelworks closed the water pumps were turned off and the bunker flooded. Millions of gallons of water had to be pumped out to enable us to use it. For one week from 31st July-7th August it will house one of the most important annual art shows in Wales and I hope I'll see you there!