“Its easier to have new ideas in old buildings” I can’t recall who said that but it sounds about right.
We moved the last of our stuff out of Welcome House yesterday. The former Youth hostel that Made in Roath have been using as a free artist studio and general creative hub for the past year. Its played an important role in our calendar for the last year with it being used to hold exhibitions and studio openings, CREATE workshops and even a group of very talented architecture students who were designing seating.
It has been fantastic to have our own space and a roof over our heads, it comes as a surprise to most people to learn Made in Roath doesn’t have an office or any permanent building. The whole organisation is run from kitchens, using mobile phones with hasty meetings fitted into busy lives.
Welcome house has provided a welcome place to base ourselves. We hope too that it has also provided a welcome studio for many artists. The old youth hostel layout made it ideal for temporary studios which we were pleased to make available for artists to use free of charge.
It also provided a base for workshops, the CREATE team installed their own mess making place and were able to run everything from postcard to life size puppet workshops.
I think my lasting memory of Welcome House will be the mess, the place was a mess when we went in, housing a collective group of creative people, not to mention a few break in’s by villainous riff-raff (to put it politely). The place was never going to be clean but it was never meant to be clean. Creativity isn’t clean, its messy. From mess and madness work comes out. Wondering from room to room it was evident that this mess was part of that creativity. It was wonderful to witness the places creative mess.
Welcome House will be taken down soon to make way for new housing but we thank the landlord for allowing us to create mess and to house our creativity in Welcome House.
p.s as we were clearing our Welcome House we came across this thing. For the life of us we have no idea what it is or what it could be used for. One lasting mystery of Welcome House.
