Identity, Creativity and Performance Spaces in Wales and Southwest England

Abstract

Globally, performative spaces and venues of artistic creativity are governed by sets of conventions which impact the creative process. In this article, we discuss the experiences of four different creatives, operating in four different creative spaces.  A poet and football player, a theatre producer and script writer, a gallery curator, and a ballet dancer have all shared their experiences of how traditionally white and heteronormative discourses regulate their respective creative spaces, the ways they conform to or transgress these norms, and the ways their interactions with their chosen creative spaces affect their creativity. These creatives have identities which are somehow ‘marked’, somehow ‘different’ from the ‘norms’ Wales and South-West England. Whether members of the LGBTQ+ community, migrants to Wales from European and Caribbean countries, or being a different race to many around them, the creatives all have complicated interactions with the norms of their creative spaces within Wales and South-West England. These creative’s identities often clash with an entrenched lack of diversity and the broader expectations of British society. Despite, or perhaps, because of, these conflicts and tensions, each of the creatives discussed here found immense joy in the relationship between their identity/ies and their creative spaces and discovered how their own identity/ies are a central driving force for their creativity. Regardless of the differences of their mediums, each creative interviewed sought to centre their identity, to help them create art which can challenge dominant white and heteronormative discourses in wider British society.