THE Friars Walk shopping and leisure centre will be the catalyst for Newport’s future when it opens in a little over two months from now.

But we are delighted the city’s future will include references to its past.

Artwork commemorating the Chartists and their fight for democracy will be included in the new shopping centre.

A frieze created by artist Sebastien Boyesen will depict the words of a poem about the Newport Chartist Uprising by Welsh poet laureate Gillian Clarke.

And steps linking the revamped John Frost Square to the new Usk Plaza will be engraved with the six points of the People’s Charter.

It is important to emphasise that neither artwork is intended to be a replacement for the city’s Chartist Mural, demolished in controversial fashion to make way for Friars Walk.

The mural is now consigned to history. It will never be replaced in any like-for-like fashion.

But the new artworks, complemented by some of the ideas put forward by the Chartist Commission, mean Chartism will have a high profile in the new-look city.

That is good news for Newport as it reasserts itself in the modern world while claiming its place in history as one of the homes of modern democracy.