The Stage

Pugh appoints new chair against ACW wishes

Published Tuesday 28 March 2006 at 16:35 by Nuala Calvi

Welsh culture minister Alun Pugh has gone against the wishes of the Arts Council of Wales by refusing to allow sacked chairman Geraint Talfan Davies to remain in post until a review of arts funding in the country is completed.

ACW board members had delivered a message of defiance to Pugh last week by voting for Davies, who is opposed to the minister’s plans to take Wales’ six largest arts organisations out of the control of the arts council, to stay on as interim chair.

But Pugh has instead appointed Professor Dai Smith, a cultural historian who joined ACW two years ago, to the job. Announcing the decision, he said: “As holder of the Raymond Williams Chair in Cultural History at Swansea, Professor Smith is not only a distinguished cultural historian, he also has a huge enthusiasm for the arts and is eminently suited to carry out this role.”

A statement from ACW said: “The Arts Council of Wales unanimously decided that the person best placed to lead the council through the current review as interim chair is the current chairman, Geraint Talfan Davies. The council also expressed a wish that the public appointments procedure be properly followed in appointing a new chair.

“The council will also be writing to the Commissioner for Public Appointments, the Charity Commissioners and the Wales Audit Office to seek further advice and to express its deep concern about the management of the appointment process to date.”

All three opposition parties’ culture spokesmen have also signed a letter to the Commissioner for Public Appointments voicing their concern about the way the process has been handled, after reports that Pugh approached ACW members directly to be the organisation’s vice chair.

Plaid Cymru’s shadow culture minister Owen John Thomas told The Stage: “After announcing that he was going to advertise the job of chair and that I would be involved in the recruitment process, he hasn’t done it. It’s legally binding under the royal charter that a chair must be appointed on April 1 when the present term of the chair comes to an end.”

In his statement, Pugh said: “Under the royal charter, I have a responsibility to appoint the chair. Because of the impending review, an interim arrangement is needed until the way forward is clear for starting the full appointment process.”

He added that the chair of the review panel would be Elan Closs Stephens, professor of communications and creative industries at the University of Wales Aberystwyth and outgoing chair of television channel S4C.