Permeability

“Rebuilding the Voice of Resolven” seeks to create a new community hub at the heart of Resolven - a centre for the creative arts and local social life. This will fill the void of the lack of existing central gathering places in the community and help to create a wider socio-cultural network which can enrich the agency of the whole valley. Performing arts offer the opportunity to create rich intergenerational connections between young and old, improve individual mental health and skills, and foster social participation – reconnecting the town to its industrial heritage and giving it a new voice going forward into the future.

To achieve this reimagining of the Miners Welfare, the proposal takes two key steps. Firstly, the exterior façade is rendered more attractive and more welcoming to the street. This seeks to ameliorate the current negative (derelict) visual perception of the building, increase footfall from local passers-by, and foster a sense of permeability to the building envelope – truly embodying the sense of a shared community space open to all.

Secondly the scheme seeks to remedy the cluttered internal layout of the interior of the Welfare, creating clearer routes of circulation, drawing in increased internal light, improving accessibility, and crafting more multifunctional spaces for the performing arts and local community groups.

Spatially this takes the form of a renovated existing body for the Welfare, adjoined by a newbuild extension to the West. This extension shall house the “Honesty Café”, an addition to the Miners Hall which will provide a calm respite space where daytime social activity might take place. It will overlook the Chwarae, a new performance practice space in place of the current open hall – a sort of primer to the larger theatre above. This tangible visual link will allow parents to watch their kids perform in the hall, whist they have a chat, sit back and have a coffee, or read the day away. Together these will be framed by a new community garden in-between, a place which seeks to embody the sense of a truly communal gathering space for all the people of Resolven.

More generally, activity is to be divided diurnally, with a Northern ring of spaces catering to the calmer creative activities of the day, whilst a Southern zone focused on a new refurbished Drift Pub will provide for the more lively social events of the night. Alongside this division of space, circulation is also to be improved by the creation of two distinct routes which service this diurnal distinction. This includes an improved entrance and grand staircase up to the restored theatre (creating an inherent theatricality for the procession towards shows and events), and an accessible side entrance which guides circulation directly to the cafe and garden beyond. This creates a more permeable building, allowing direct welcoming routes in and out from the wider community.

Overall, this scheme offers a vision of how to restore the Miners Hall to what it always was, a genuine gathering space for the whole community which can offer a collective voice for all the people of Resolven. Though mining may no longer be the heart around which social life in the town revolves, reimagining it as a centre for a whole network of community and performance groups can fill the void left behind, and create a new cultural thread which weaves industrial heritage and the long history of the community into a brighter future for everyone.