Craith

There’s a TV programme called Craith; someone said to me on Twitter that it was the ‘real’ Craith. Craith is a word. It means scar. It’s OK for there to be a TV programme called Craith AND an experimental arts project called Craith. The world can cope.

There is a scar where I’m from, and in the last few years, it’s been opened. When Pete Jones, Alan Holmes and I formed Craith in the front room of The Auckland in Porthaethwy/Menai Bridge, over much German beer, we had a mind to carry on scratching at that scar.

‘Sugar and Slate’ is a demo from our project. It appears as our contribution to the charity digital album https://comradiation.bandcamp.com/releases. There’s more to come. The three of us are involved in all manner of other miscellaneous ‘arts’ but we’ve got a mind to complete and present a finished piece that will entertain, inform and challenge. There – an instant pitch to a large broadcaster.

We’re from a community where the exploitation of workers in the slate industry was interlinked with the grim history of slavery. The casual train traveller or visiting tourist might see the turrets of the Pennant’s grim architectural folly and see a romantic ‘castle in the woods’. That’s not what we see.