Tan y Bont
Canolfan Tan y Bont was once a popular destination for all ages and for young people especially with groups and individuals from the Welsh rock and music scene performing there regularly.
Established in 1976, it was the venue for many momentous evenings in the history of the Welsh Rock Scene. The building has now been destroyed, and the site is currently occupied by the Ffordd y Felin car park.
The intention of the CANFAS project was to create artwork that pays tribute to the buzz that used to be there in Canolfan Tan y Bont, with all the work being inspired by the songs and albums, and the musicians who performed at the Centre.
Leading on this project is GISDA, a charity offering shelter and support to homeless young people in the area.
Working closely with GISDA’s Creative Team, young people from GISDA have been working hard to discover the history and stories behind Canolfan Tan y Bont.
The young people from GISDA chose a team of artists to collaborate with them on this project, producing a collection of artworks currently on display across the Tan y Bont area – all influenced by various elements associated with the iconic Centre.
The Building – Ffion Pritchard
This section focuses on the facades of the Canolfan Tanybont building. It is an expressive interpretation of the building, full of colour and vitality. It aims to capture the spirit and energy of the centre, through active use of colour and materials. As well as capturing the fun and hedonism of Canolfan Tanybont in its heyday, the history is so naturally interwoven in the architecture – as an example, we see a leg in one of the windows, representing all the young people who sneaked into the building for music and dance! The piece was created in collaboration with very dedicated artists in the group of young people from GISDA.
Ffion Pritchard is a community artist with a wide range of experience in the arts, design, entertainment and media sector. At the heart of her practice, is the belief that art benefits society, whether through community art, art in healthcare or through the power of cathartic storytelling, humour and entertainment. After training as an illustrator, graduating from Brighton university with a first-class honours in 2017, her practice has continued to be broad and eclectic, spanning across film, drawing, and community art disciplines.
The Memories - Lleucu Non
Lleucu Non is an Artist from the Nantlle Valley specialising in 2D Animation by hand and has recently graduated with a BA in Animation from Edinburgh College of Art. She loves drawing people and exploring how culture and human nature can be portrayed in still images and film.
These final pieces display collaborative images between Lleucu and young people from GISDA. The focus of the sessions was on reviving memories. In particular, local people’s memories of the exciting old Tan y Bont club. She experimented with collage, oil pastels, graphite and digital colour to create colourful and engaging portraits of some of the energetic artists who performed there in the 1970s.
The Music – Lynwen Lloyd
Lynwen is an artist who lives in Caernarfon and works as a graphic designer, she is part of GISDA’s creative team, and also enjoys working with collage and textiles.
Lynwen’s piece is inspired by the album covers of some of the bands who performed at Canolfan Tan y Bont, posters of evenings in the Canolfan and pieces from old copies of the ‘Sgrech’ magazine. Primary colours and memorable characters such as ‘Mr Vinyl’ were used to convey these ideas in her work. Other inspiring elements were the bananas, black and white striped trousers on the cover of ‘Sgrech’, and extracts from ‘Sgrech’, namely ‘Tanybont is the place’ and ‘The place in the centre of town’. The intention was to create four images and to set them out in a notice-board style.
The Artists - Rhys Grail
Rhys’ work is inspired by the musicians and bands who played at the Canolfan. Working with a group of young people from GISDA, he used an archive of artists playing at Canolfan Tan y Bont to create 6 pictures which were screen-printed was on 7-inch vinyl discs”. Combining techniques such as collage, scanning and screen printing they created an ‘abstract’ and ‘grungy’ collection of memories about Clwb Tan Y Bont. In discussing the project Rhys said, ‘As a visual artist I find myself using more than one medium when I create art, and re-adapt finished pieces to create completely different pieces! ‘There’s something quite ‘cool’ to see how many times a piece of art can be transformed using different media!’
Hedydd’s Project
Caernarfon is a musical town to its core and the aim of this project was to capture this in a unique way. Alongside the artwork displayed around the Tan y Bont area, the artist Hedydd Ioan worked with a group from GISDA and the wider community to realise the vision of musician Sera Zyborska to create a ‘soundscape’ project inspired by the town and the history of Canolfan Tan y Bont.
My name is Hedydd, I am an artist from the Nantlle Valley who works within film, music and theatre. Usually, on a daily basis, I have the privilege of working with a host of wonderful artists and young people to create exciting and interesting pieces. When the opportunity arose to be part of the team that brought Tan y Bont’s story to life, I was really looking forward to it. When we started, all we knew that we wanted a piece of audio and a piece of film to accompany the works of art and the sessions that took place as part of the Canfas work. As the sessions began and as I held a couple of music sessions myself, I started to develop a track of all the sounds I was collecting around the place. Through this process and Ffion Pritchard’s fantastic work in Gisda documenting the art sessions, a sound scape developed which tells the history of the club, but also shows the voices of young people in Caernarfon today. The process of spending time getting to know the history and the young people is great and I am so proud of the piece that has been created to showcase this special story.
