Culture highlights 2024: Glamour and glitz as Taylor Swift came to Cardiff

Gosia Buzzanca

I remember having lunch with a friend on the afternoon of 18th of June this year, in the restaurant of a hotel she stayed at, enjoying fish and chips and the quiet before the storm.

We would eat, talk and then suddenly go quiet at once, mesmerised by the sights seen from the tall clear windows.

St Mary street was heaving, like it does every weekend and each time rugby is in town, but this time it felt different. It was glitter, sequins, all the colours of the rainbow reflected in the near-summer sun that filled the city and captivated us into silence and awe.

Taylor Swift came to Cardiff for only one night, bringing to Wales her record-breaking, five continents and 152 dates spanning Eras Tour. How lucky we were to sit and marvel at the crowds, of all ages and genders, dressed up to the nines in outfits inspired by all of the eleven albums she has released.

Buzzing

How lucky we were to step out of the hotel and into the buzzing, happy, excitable streets. It felt like history in the making before the concert had even started, it felt like walking into the hushed revery of a watershed moment, the kind that only happens a handful of times in a person’s lifetime.

At the show Taylor Swift together with her band and dancers had given the Welsh crowds their everything, and we gave everything back to them with the ease and generosity we’re known for. ‘This one’s for the books’, Taylor said to us at some point, and it truly was.

The three and a half hour long show became a core memory to everyone lucky enough to attend. Local fans and visitors from across the globe had left the Principality Stadium reeling, still singing, breathing the now cooler air of the near solstice night, dropping in their wake letter beads of many exchanged friendship bracelets, forming instead friendships that will outlast any of them.

It was truly a rare night for Cardiff, but we will never forget the impact it had on us and on the city. We were there, shimmering beautiful, fully present.

In the recent days two pictures of Taylor came up to the surface, of her sitting inside her cleaning cart that was famously used to transport her onto the stage. In both of them, taken across different points in time and geographical place, there is a picture of Cardiff Bay.

One is a photograph, one a print of an artwork by Rachel Rasmussen, a Welsh artist who had since seen a hike in sales on her website’s shop. Taylor Swift smiles widely, on her way to yet another show, and I can’t help but hope that she thought of us at each step of her beloved Eras Tour. See you soon, Taylor.

Sophie Buchaillard

Moving away from the traditional travel log, Sarn Helen by Tom Bullough (Granta) has been a revelation for me this year.

Walking from south to north Wales along the old Roman road, Bullough tracks the implications of climate change for Wales. We come to understand that such a change will for ever transform Bullough’s beloved landscape. Yet, change we must.

That much is clear. And so, we find the author, no longer in the hills of Wales, but in a magistrate court in London, one of many peaceful protesters arrested for calling the rest of us to attention. My name, under regular circumstances, is Tom. I am forty-five years old: a writer and a tutor in Creative Writing. I have two parents of retirement age. I have two children of primary-school age. Tom Bullough is any one of us.

And as I read the statement which he gave the court, I think about my own child; about the kind of future which he is going to inherit; about the actions we have taken as a family and whether there is more that we should be doing; whether it will be enough. Sarn Helen is a book of our time which spoke to me because it provides a local, relatable, perspective on the climate crisis.

Challenge

Framed in the continuity of a Welsh history shaped by periods of challenge and reinvention, it urges the end of division and invites collective action, from us all.

Taking another walk, I found myself in the National Museum Wales (Cardiff), in a room populated with a series of pictures and text in an Instagram post format, reproduced from a journey undertaken and documented by the artist Michal Iwanowski.

In April 2018, Iwanowski left his home in Cardiff to travel the 1,000-mile journey to his home village of Mokrzeszów in Poland. Armed with his Polish and British passport, he crossed seven countries over 105 days, as a meditation on the meaning of home, prompted by a tag that would become the title of the exhibition: Go Home Polish.

To me, the exhibition – and the book that has since emerged from it – was poignant, not simply because Iwanowski and I arrived in Wales on the same day, in 2001, and both made our home in Wales, but because his reflection has a universal resonance for anyone who ever made root in a new home.