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The founding fathers of trac, four Welsh traditional music enthusiasts (Stephen Rees, Ceri Rhys Matthews, Danny KilBride and Philip Freeman), established the organisation in 1997 with the conviction that a strategic development agency was essential to ensure that Wales? musical traditions would not wither and die, notes Geoff Cripps.

It took trac four and a half years to travel from an excellent project research report (Establishing a Folk Development Organisation for Wales, by Penni Blythe,1999) to achieving an Arts Council of Wales (ACW) Arts For All two-year award, match-funding from the Carnegie UK Trust, charitable status and to become a company limited by guarantee. In all that time, the founding objectives remained to give purpose to the nascent organisation:
? To increase awareness, understanding and confidence in the music, song and dance traditions within Wales.
? To raise awareness outside Wales of traditional activities taking place within Wales, and to create links with other organisations and participants throughout the world.

trac recruited me as Development Director in the autumn of 2001, as well as an Administrator, and to officially launch the work programme in January 2002. Both posts are part-time and are home office-based. One of our challenges is how to cover the entire country, with its regional distinctiveness and communication challenges, in an effective way. An initial two centre approach ? one in North Powys and one in South-East Wales ? demonstrates that this is an issue we are engaged with.

It was recognised from the outset that we would need to work in partnership with other agencies, organisations and local government in order to demonstrate the delivery of projects that had clear legacy benefits and most importantly, to place traditional music, song and culture on the educational and political agendas of Welsh organisations. Our first two projects were an introduction to the traditional music and instruments of Wales with Gwynedd CC Arts Development and Cwmni Cynnal (music development service), and an introduction to Welsh folk song with Caerphilly CBC Arts Development, Music Support Service, libraries and Menter Iaith Caerffili (language support agency).

We also recognised that an essential element of our work was to build relationships with already established organisations in the sector, such as the Welsh Folk Dance Society and Welsh Folk Song Society. We have needed to be an advocate for the traditional arts in Wales and have lobbied the Welsh Assembly Government and organisations like the Wales Tourist Board to forge new partnerships that will allow greater participation in these traditional arts to take place, as well as trying to provide more opportunities for a growing professional group of musicians, dancers and singers to emerge.

Deliberately not a membership organisation, we have sought to establish contact points during a calendar of activities that allow traditional arts practitioners and enthusiasts to feed into our programme and project development work. Our move into a ?training the trainers? programme, funded by ELWa, Arts Training Wales and ACW, was a direct response to the issue being raised at our first public forum. We plan two public meetings a year and have also instituted an annual Folk Arts Conference for Wales. One of the burning issues discussed at the first such in February was the misguided and potentially damaging implications of the Public Entertainment Licence Bill, currently on its troubled passage through Parliament.

When we embarked on our work programme, the first Cultural Strategy for Wales was published and in it Jenny Randerson AM, Minister for Culture, stated: ?In traditional and folk music, Wales is too far behind Scotland and Ireland in celebrating its heritage and nurturing its performing traditions.? With the backing of this Minister and ACW, we are working hard to redress that balance.

Geoff Cripps is Development Director of trac. t: 01495 230730; e: trac@trac-cymru.org; w: http://www.trac-cymru.org