Garden Festival Wales breathed new life into derelict industrial land at Ebbw Vale – and in the 20 years since the site has been transformed again. ANDY RUTHERFORD looks at the legacy of the festival.

WHEN the gates finally closed on Garden Festival Wales in October 1992 plans for use of the site were already well advanced.

The aim was to create Wales’ first urban village, and jobs for more than 1,000 people.

If the vision for National Garden Festivals was to bring back into use derelict land, then what to do with them afterwards had until then proved trickier to realise than the festivals themselves.

The site of the first festival in Liverpool in 1984, for instance, had lain unused for years. Its fate was all the more poignant because of the unfulfilled potential it offered, given the industrial wasteland it had replaced.

At Ebbw Vale, while it is true the builders did not move in the day after those gates closed, there was a plan in place, and crucially, there were developers willing to implement it.

Many of the features of Garden Festival Wales were sold off, such as the funicular railway and the land trains that ferried visitors up and down the site.

But many were retained, such as the pagoda and the lake, as part of a 63-acre Festival Park, a permanent recreational facility and a reminder, too, of the environmental vision that underpinned the event.

Today the legacy of the massive programme of tree and shrub planting for the festival is an established green landscape enjoyed both by the residents of the village – Victoria – established during the post-festival years, and by people in Ebbw Vale and its environs.

It is enjoyed too by visitors from further afield, who, when the weather is amenable, can take a break from spending their money in the Festival Park shopping outlet.

The village of Victoria itself is now well established in the valley, along with the shopping outlet.

Two departments of Blaenau Gwent Council – lifelong learning and technical services – are based on the festival site, along with a Premier Inn and a pub, the Victoria Park.

There is also a range of other employers based on the site.

Importantly too, the improved A4046 has not only strengthened the transport link between Ebbw Vale and Newport, but has provided a link between the festival site and the town, and also the vast former Corus steelworks site to the north, where a new hospital is based, and where new education and leisure facilities are being developed.

There is also the passenger rail link – which opened four years ago and has proved very successful – linking the Ebbw Valley with Cardiff, and Ebbw Vale Parkway station is on the edge of the festival site.

Another example of the diverse range of organisations based at Festival Park is Festival Church.

Based in one of the festival’s original buildings, the church began operating within months of the event closing, and is still going strong 20 years on.

And as well as being a place of worship, Festival Church runs its own radio station, Mountain FM, from the venue, and hosts the Ebbw Vale foodbank, which has provided help for more than 2,500 people since it opened in 2008.

Reverend John Curtis, who spotted the potential of the building after the festival closed as a site for what was proposed as a mega-church, said that while it had not grown that much in terms of congregation, it retains a very committed core.

“It was always in the vision that we should be able to help the wider community in some way, and we heard of the Trussell Trust (a charity working to empower communities and combat poverty and social exclusion) and its foodbank projects,”

said Mr Curtis.

“It is sad that such places are needed, but it is a vital lifeline.”

Education on offer at studios

WHEN Garden Festival Wales was held Rachel Owen was a pupil at Cwm Primary School, immediately south of the festival site.

Twenty years later she runs Cave Studios, an innovative social enterprise on the edge of the old festival site. Cave was born out of the success of a project called Rockschool, run by Ebbw Vale and District Trust, a not-for-profit development trust and charity set up to help economic and social regeneration of the town in the aftermath of the steelworks closure in 2001.

Funding was eventually secured to establish a music studio, and as Miss Owen explained: “We also decided that while we were working with children and young people we would branch out and get film and photographic equipment.”

The making of adverts, infomercials, and DVDs brought in enough money to keep Cave going, and the premises was extended to provide a photographic studio and editing suite.

“We run workshops with young people and community groups, and a course teaching photographic skills,” said Miss Owen.

“There are also sessions in basic skills, such as preparing CVs, to try to help people get back into work, and to get young people work-ready.”

In less than three years diverse projects carried out through Cave include a DVD on immigration and social cohesion, a project with Blaenau Gwent’s domestic abuse service, and work with a Johnny Cash tribute band