Wales needs to take its American diaspora seriously

This article is intended to influence the conversation about engagement with the Welsh diaspora before the forces of inertia get in the way of deciding what needs to be done – and, worse, lead to the strategy being executed half-heartedly.

The debate needs to be public and involve the North American Welsh because, as has been noted many times before, there are likely to be no fewer than 1.8 million of us in America alone – likely more, with population growth and other factors.[1]

In comparison, the Welsh diaspora elsewhere is different (with the exceptions of Australia and Patagonia), being based largely on expatriates. In America and Canada, there are few expatriates and many more “heritage” Welsh. This requires a different set of choices from corporate jollies (as in Dubai or Tokyo) and WRU-like glad-handing – and look at how well these have done recently, or indeed, ever.

For the record, I am a member of the Welsh diaspora who left Cymru in 1996. I have had many opportunities to observe how the UK Government handles Welsh culture (it puts in one-twentieth of the effort, at best, and more often filters out Wales in America). I will not dwell on the previous Welsh administration: to steal Douglas Adams’s famous metaphor, you can’t cook a steak by coming up to a piece of meat and breathing on it. The less said, the better.

The great thing about the new Welsh Government is that it has ambition and wants to do great things for Cymru. A dominant strategy for any country like Cymru is to use its assets to best effect, and these assets include its distinctiveness (“USP”), history (“story”), culture and language (“product”), and purpose (“mission”).

According to Mazzini, every country has a purpose in the world.[2] Cymru’s purpose, based on its history, is to promote culture of all sorts and, through this, understanding and peace. That’s why the Urdd is what it is, as is the Llangollen Eisteddfod.

Moreover, that’s why Cymru petitioned for peace in the 1920s, supported civil rights in the 1960s (look up the Wales Window for Alabama), provided comfort to Nelson Mandela and the ANC, and continued to support the fight against injustice more fiercely than the Westminster state does. In sum, using your diaspora seriously is part of a nation-building project. Hen bryd.

Further, our story is one of contribution to the American Enlightenment[3] and the American Industrial Revolution[4] – not to mention the transatlantic world.[5] And our products – cultural and physical – are excellent. People are interested in our language, culture and distinctiveness, especially North Americans. These are not things to hide under a bushel.

The Cymry have a continuous historical story and literature: people want to hear our stories because they are fresh and new. We therefore have to go around the British state to be heard.

So, what does this mean? In practical terms, we need to understand that the North American Welsh diaspora is a diffuse market (the technical term is “the long tail” of a distribution curve), but with a few clusters.

These clusters are in places you’d expect (New York) and in other, less likely places (Vancouver, BC; Scranton, PA; Utica, NY; Oregon City, OR; Ohio; Wisconsin; Nebraska; and Utah – to name but a few). No one to date has been successful in breaking open this market; we have a low uptake, to put it mildly. But that is because no one has properly analysed the market or had the motivation, means and ambition to leverage it.

If we have 3 million Welsh Americans, we have to be canny about marketing and accepting not just of those of Welsh heritage, but also of those who are simply interested in Welsh culture. If anyone wearing green on St Patrick’s Day can be Irish, then anyone can be Welsh on St David’s Day or Owain Glyndŵr’s Day if they wear red.

The implication is that someone has to direct viral marketing towards Welsh resources whenever someone breathes the word “Welsh” on the internet. Or, if a person finds out they are Welsh through DNA testing or Ancestry.com, there should be ways to channel that interest to a collection point so that the demand (currently underserved) can be managed and turned into participation and goodwill in an online community of sorts.

Before I became an educator, I was a corporate strategist and technologist. Strategy is a series of choices that leads to an outcome, such as winning a battle or achieving market dominance.[6] This article proposes a combination of policy choices for the Welsh Government to make to better engage the diaspora in North America.

The reader’s mileage may vary, to use the American vernacular. However, this represents a personal view based on my interaction with the American Welsh online and in person across the country, at venues such as NAFOW, Rio Grande University, Cymdeithas Madog, NAASWCH and elsewhere – not to mention my Ysgol Haf, hosted online by the Great Plains Welsh Heritage Center.

1. Strategy doesn’t have to be about money

Although funding a community organiser or two in the United States might really help establish a permanent diaspora relationship, a lot can be achieved by the Welsh Government as a leader and connector of Welsh-American activity in North America.

Its ministers must bring together ad hoc coalitions of people and organisations to organise and cross-promote events. Having these conversations and being entrepreneurial about events and connections will lead to new projects and ideas – and creative funding from high-net-worth individuals.

The importance of leadership, coordination and providing resources in kind (like marketing, social media content and cultural content – putting the entire S4C archive online, for instance) cannot be overestimated.

We American-Welsh do things (e.g. the scholarships for American and Canadian students in Wales provided by the WNAA), but we can scale up and achieve synergies if we work with others in Cymru.

We have already seen some of this through the efforts of the American-Welsh (the late and beloved Dolly Parton’s work with Bronwen Lewis, or Matthew Rhys’s shout-out to his heritage at the Emmys). Think of what could happen if these sorts of events were incorporated into a broader network that was managed rather than ad hoc.

2. Cymru has embassies and doesn’t know it – and all the archives should go online

There are cultural centres in likely and unlikely places, and these can be used as footholds in North America. Cambrian Hall (Vancouver), Rio Grande University (Ohio), the Great Plains Welsh Heritage Center (Nebraska) and Bryn Seion (Oregon) are community, educational and historic sites of interest that should act as regional clusters, in addition to the places where the New York Welsh congregate.

3. Use culture, education and language as weapons for goodwill; universities have a natural market for transatlantic research and exchange

There is an underserved (albeit diffuse) demand for Welsh cultural resources, which people will be drawn to if they are made available through cutting-edge and traditional channels.

These resources need to be curated, organised and incorporated into online archives so that the American Welsh and the Welsh can connect and converse with one another.

We have a shared Atlantic and Enlightenment history that can be taught if we help universities like Rio Grande and institutions like GPWHC, NAFOW and NAASWCH grow and provide popular and academic offerings. It’s time for an academic strategy tied to a cultural one.

4. Manage a funnel

Interest in Cymru/Wales has to be organised into a funnel that leads to an organised community led by the Welsh Government, with contributions from the American-Welsh societies.

These societies should be helped with their strategies to bring people to local events and provided with information packets that help them organise themselves and promote the cultural agenda.

The management and leadership of this community should be a joint effort between the North American organisations and the Welsh Government. This body should also manage the marketing and content curation for the diffuse online community. These two types of organisation (local and online) should cross-promote and organise together.

This article is a call to action. If Cymru wants to engage its diaspora, it needs the will to do so and to leverage the assets that already exist. It needs a deliberate plan for outreach and sustained engagement. It needs to realise that its cultural and educational outputs are valuable and unique.

Once Cymru starts to engage, its light will shine and grow, and we can contribute to spreading the idea that our culture brings people together to celebrate the good things in life. Only then do business deals get done – because the connections have to be made real first.