What is a nation? There are several, varying definitions, but ultimately it comes down to the same answer: a large group of people bound together through shared culture, history and language. For us in Cymru, the idea of a Welsh nation is something about which we are pretty sensitive and protective. Our most provocative historian, Gwyn Alf Williams, said that Wales has “from birth … lived with the threat of extinction” and that the survival of Welsh nationhood is “one of the minor miracles of history”.
To those of you who mainly know Wales through the occasional holiday, the Six Nations and Gareth Bale, this might sound an odd thing to say. After all, whenever you see Wales or Welsh people represented anywhere they are loudly and unequivocally, well, Welsh.
But this is not merely an expression of pride; it is a necessity. Wales is a nation of just over 3 million people bordering a country of 57 million, so there is an ever present risk that we could be swallowed up and amalgamated. Our nation didn’t even have a capital city until Cardiff was named in 1955. This insecurity about our own existence is summed up in the chorus of the song Yma o Hyd, which is sung before Welsh international football matches: “Ry’n ni yma o hyd / Er gwaetha pawb a phopeth.” This translates as: “We are still here, in spite of everyone and everything.”
Back in 1997, Wales voted for devolution, and the Welsh assembly was created in 1999. This officially became the Welsh parliament (Senedd Cymru) in 2020. One of the overriding motivations for devolution was that it would protect Wales and Welsh nationhood. It came with the promise that the future development of our nation would be in our hands and safeguarded. However, the emptiness of this promise has been laid bare by a system that is in many ways the worst of both worlds. Wales is left with a UK government that feels it can wash its hands of responsibility for us, while successive Welsh governments have seemingly lacked the talent, drive or fiscal levers to make Wales better.
If you want an example of this, look no further than the truly awful position of culture within Wales. The numbers are stark. A recent Senedd committee report found that Wales ranks second from bottom, among selected European countries, in terms of cultural services spending for each person. Only Greece was lower. Even from the miserly wider UK perspective, Wales’s cultural spend is pitiful. Cymru spends £69.68 a person for cultural services, compared with the UK’s £91.12. For context, Spain spends about £113, Ireland £149, Belgium £209 and France £237. Iceland tops the table at £691.60. In sport, it is just as bad: Wales spends £5 to £6 a head; by contrast, Ireland spends £27.50.
It wasn’t always this way. Welsh cultural budgets have been slashed over the last decade. Between 2014/15 and 2024/25, funding for the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales has declined by 34% in real terms. Sport Wales has seen a 9% fall, the Books Council of Wales’s total income has reduced by 20% and revenue funding for the Arts Council of Wales reduced in real terms by 29%. It is heartbreaking to see how these cuts manifest themselves day to day across Cymru. Just last weekend, the National Museum Cardiff announced it was temporarily closing its doors because of the building’s deteriorating condition. It has since reopened, but still, events tell a story. Only nine months before, the Welsh culture secretary gave assurances the building would remain open.
National Youth Arts Wales, which is an umbrella organisation for the likes of the National Youth Choir and National Youth Theatre (and where Michael Sheen, Matthew Rhys, Ruth Jones and Rakie Ayola started their journeys) has railed against the “shameful” state of youth arts funding in Wales. The situation has become such that Sheen last month funded the launch of the Welsh National Theatre after the National Theatre Wales “ceased to exist” following £1.6m in cuts to its core funding from Arts Council of Wales.
There is a wider issue here for Wales because the arts is also a vital way in which the Welsh language is promoted. Going back to that definition of what it is to be a “nation”, a key part of it is shared culture and language. These cuts are not merely tragic because they rob individuals of all the benefits that come with the arts; they are also robbing Wales of a major part of what makes it a nation.
That the National Museum Cardiff building was closed because of its dilapidated state encapsulates this very issue. Its construction in 1912 began as part of a huge nation-building programme within Wales. It was about making Wales distinct. At the time, legislation covering England and Wales didn’t say “England and Wales” as it does now; it simply read “England” (this didn’t change till the 1950s). To be a nation and not merely an appendage of England, it was felt you needed a museum. Now, 25 years into devolution, it is crumbling due to lack of funds.
The blame for this sorry state of affairs lies in several places. Since the onset of Tory austerity in 2010, successive Welsh Labour governments have had to reallocate money into a struggling health service, which has to contend with a population that is older, sicker and more spread out than in England. But the Welsh Labour government must not be given a pass on this. If they were acting in the theatre, their performance as the stewards of Wales’s culture would have been lampooned and derided for totally lacking in believability. While they have been dealt a tough hand financially, there are failings that they must own.
Last weekend I published the contents of a leaked internal report from within the “cultural division” inside the Welsh government, which surveyed the views of staff. This included condemnation of the alleged lack of “real performance management taking place” within the government, meaning that “managers who may not wish to have difficult conversations can avoid them and therefore staff who are not performing ‘get away’ with it”. It also found that staff felt “there was no sense of strategic long term planning” and there was “a widely held view that ministers’ expectations are not being managed”. It is woeful that this is the department charged with overseeing culture in Wales.
When you erode Welsh culture you erode Wales. The arts are not a “nice to have”; they are vital. Urgent change is needed or else the land of song risks being finally silenced.
Will Hayward is a Guardian columnist
