STEVE GARRETT (MSc)
35 Beauchamp Street, Riverside, Cardiff CF11 6AX
Tel: 029 2022 7982; 0781 4770450; e: culturalconcerns@onetel.com
Steve runs Cultural Concerns (CC), a consultancy based in Cardiff, providing advice, training and expertise in participatory arts project management, promoting the potential of participatory arts to link individuals’ personal creativity with wider processes of regeneration and community development. CC also provides conference and event management services, and organises regular international community arts exchange projects and collaborations, with an emphasis on traditional and community music. CC works for a better recognition of, and support for, the creativity of people who work outside of traditional art forms and cultural institutions, and promotes the potential of participatory arts to link individuals’ personal creativity with wider processes of regeneration and community development. Cultural Concerns also works with voluntary sector organisations on the setting up of participatory arts projects which enable them to engage with their target constituencies in a creative way, and advises statutory agencies on developing cultural policies in relation to disadvantaged groups.
As Founder and former Chair of the Riverside Community Market Association (RCMA) and a Director of RCMA Social Enterprise Ltd., Steve Garrett has helped steer Cardiff’s award-winning Riverside Farmers’ Market through its thirteen years of growth, and various spin-off activities such as: setting up four other farmers markets in Cardiff (including a new weekly market in the city centre); overseeing RCMA’s education and outreach activities, including the RCMA Community Allotment; writing the RCMA Urban Farmers' Market Toolkit; supporting a group of local women to set up the Riverside Food Coop; setting up the Taffside Food and Health Network (which engages with local BME residents in helping them address their food and health needs); and most recently helping develop the RCMA Market Garden project - a
food producing social enterprise, which will provide training in horticulture for local people and contribute to creating a sustainable food chain in Cardiff.
Steve was a founder member of Farmers Markets in Wales, sits on the South East Wales Agrifood Partnership, the Cardiff Food and Health Strategy Group, was a steering committee member of the Wales Sustainable Supply Chain Initiative and a member of the Food Standard Agency’s Advisory Committee for Community Engagement from 2006 – 2009.. He is included in the 2009 Sustain Wales ‘Green List’ of Welsh environmental activists, was winner in the Environmentalist section of the 2010 Inspire Wales
Awards and runner up in the 2011 South Wales Business Awards. Steve is currently helping develop a Cardiff Food Charter, and planning to set up Cardiff’s first mobile farm shop. Steve has an MSc in Urban
Agriculture, and is supporting a women’s food producing cooperative in Western Zimbabwe in setting a up a pilot horticulture social enterprise.
Steve works as a freelance grant Advisor and Assessor for the Lottery-funded ‘Local Food’ programme, and is a Skillshare Mentor with the Plunkett Foundation’s ‘Making Local Food Work’ programme; a ‘Dynamo Role Model’ mentor for the Welsh Assembly; a mentor with the Social Enterprise Support Project at the Wales Co-operative Centre; and a contributing member of the f3 local food consultancy group.
Steve is involved with several community-based cultural activities, such as co-ordinating the multicultural Riverside Festival; is a board member of Cardiff’s Chapter Arts Centre; Vice - Chair of the Wales Association of Community Artists; and a Community Reporter for BBC Radio Wales. Steve is the father of an nine-year old son, and is a governor at Severn Primary school.
Recent Awards
In 2009 Steve received a travel scholarship from the Welsh Livery Guild to study urban agriculture in
Havana. He is included in the 2009 Sustain Wales ‘Green List’ of environmental activists; was winner in the Environment section of the 2010 Inspire Wales Awards; and wasshortlisted in the 2011 Leading Wales Awards in the Social Enterprise section.
Past Positions
Food Standard Agency - Advisory Committee for Community Engagement (2006 – 2009)
Welsh Assembly Government - Quality of Food: Task and Finish Group (2008)
Wales Sustainable Supply Chain Initiaitive - steering committee member (2008 – 2010)
Wales Regional Panel Member, U.K. Sustainable Development Commission (2007 – 2010)
Chair, Riverside Festival Association (1998 – 2008).
Arts Council of Wales (ACW): Council Member (2000 – 2004)
Commission for Community Music - International Society of Music Educators (ISME) (1998 – 2004)
Board Member:Sound Sense , Development Agency for Community Music (2001 – 2003) Chair: South Riverside Regeneration Forum (1999 – 2001)
Interests
Alongside my passion for local food, I have remained involved with playing music and locally
based creative activities - as a singer-songwriter under the name Stainless Steve; in a duo called KotoGo! with a Japanese koto player; in a ceilidh band; as a musician for groups such as No Fit State Circus. I have dual UK/Canadian citizenship and speak Spanish, French and Slovakian as well as some Welsh. I live in Cardiff with my nine year old son Lloyd.
<<
home page
|