During my time as Secretary for the Chamber of Trade and Commerce, I was left feeling very impressed with how much members cared about Llanelli. It influenced me greatly. Since leaving my role as secretary to the Chamber, I visited some close friends in Worthing and saw how imaginative it was.
The local council encouraged local artists from a variety of disciplines to showcase their incredible talents for all to see. It was truly spectacular and made me want to bring something like this to Llanelli. On the way home I had a light bulb moment and realised that John Street was already a haven for local artists. We had Ty Celf (Art House), the John Street Art gallery and the music shop. Two friends and I decided to form an organisation to do something about John Street.
We were often there looking at what we might be able to achieve. The biggest problem is the amount of traffic that passes through this little street. This needs to be looked at and when we started developing our ideas, as the John Street Team, it was a very important part of our work. During the two years that we have been giving it our all, we have had several organisations and individuals who have tried to block us.
Looking back at Worthing, we know with the support of all the councils we can make John Street into a place of beauty. We need that support but we are also applying for National Heritage Lottery funding.
After doing a little research we came across Art Europa. They have focused their efforts on placing small museums in town centres all over France with much success! We liked the idea and decided to approach businesses in John Street about this. I received a fantastic response from them, especially the artists already there.
The Llanelli Civic Society, Llanelli Art Society and Frederick Hughes, in particular, are very supportive of what we are trying to achieve.Myself and two friends, Chloe and Deborah, then began setting up the John Street Project and having regular meetings about how we could develop this dream into a reality. A friend has offered to help us become a not-for-profit company and with the help of our accountant we have been registered with Companies House. We also recently set up a Facebook page.
We have received some funding towards the project already from the Town Council, friends and we have also invested our own money. We have an accountant, Ashley, from Charles & Co who has been very helpful and we have a wonderful architect, Phil Lewis to make our visions come alive alongside a civil engineer and a highways official. Other notable people helping us include Shaun Greeney, Ruth Lewis an amazing artist and Zoe Coombes from Swansea University.
We turn to local people for some help and advice. We unfortunately had one issue with our plans. We were to utilise the former post office attached to Stamps as a museum. We were in negotiations with the owner of the post office which were going very well until he decided to pull out without our knowledge due to finding another interested party who was in a position to pay him more quickly than ourselves as we were reliant on getting the funding first.
The property has since been sold. We have been looking at other buildings which are empty. This is the hardest part for us because we need Lottery money to do this. This means that whoever agrees to sell us a building has to wait until we have raised enough money to buy it. It means dedication to Llanelli,to the beautification of John Street and that the Carmarthenshire County Council will help to alter the awful traffic and parking situation in John Street. It means that we all have to care about the street so that artists from all over the constituency of Llanelli can show off their work. Our plans for the street will increase footfall as more people, local or tourists, will be interested in seeing what local people have created.
We are looking for funding from local Councils but the problem is that Councils around the constituency think the museum idea is just for the Town Centre. This is not the case. The museum will be about the history of the constituency . We would like to call it, Llanelli Town Museum, Past, Present and Future but we intend that it should represent the whole constituency. We have already been sent so much historical stuff by local people for the museum. Once we have a building, we can make it beautiful.
We want to build John Street into an artistic quarter with a museum, living walls, planters, sculptures, a wind turbine and seating areas as you can see from Ruth’s lovely drawings.
We have looked at wind turbines and discovered that the French have invented a tree turbine to place into ordinary streets attached to the National Grid. The Germans are doing street lighting as turbines and the Greeks have invented harps as wind turbines. THE HARP IS ALSO WELSH. We want to place a harp turbine in John Street. At the moment our wonderful architect is working on planning permission for an arch leading to John Street.
We are ready to go but we need help from the County Council, Rural Council ( please remember that we are helping artists from all over Llanelli), Town Council, who have already helped us and all the community councils. We are all volunteers because we care about our constituency.
Another street you can’t drive through then.