JAN 2022
ISSUE 01
ALT.CARDIFF If it’s offbeat and in Cardiff then it’s in here
Image credit: Kai on Unsplash
Image credit: Md Shairaf on Unsplash
Image credit: Robert Thiemann on Unsplash
INSIDE
THE STRUGGLE TO FIND HOLIDAY CARDS 1
NEWS Newport band returns to popular city venue for intimate homecoming gig in December
Oktoberfest inspired bar to open
Garage-rock four-piece Finding Aurora set to play at Le Pub on 3 December
Heidi’s Bier Bar is set to open on Mill Lane, taking the place of what was most recently SODA and The Attic. Doors will open in early 2022 to give locals another option for a pint in the city.
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fter a couple of years where live music ground to a halt, South Wales quartet Finding Aurora are back with a bang – and a homecoming show in Newport to boot. The garage rockers are set to play an intimate show at 100 capacity venue Le Pub on 3 December to round off the year, a day after playing Manchester venue Aatma. It’s a venue the four-piece are more than familiar with – the South Wales Argus reported earlier this
The members have stayed active during the pandemic, expanding to a four-piece in 2020 and taking time out to adjust to the new dynamic before coming back with two new tracks this year: The Last Call and Kickaround. With influences including Queens of the Stone Age and Foo Fighters, the band is described on Spotify as
“It’s a blessing to be doing this again!”
year that they previously sold it out when launching their 2019 single ‘Overdrive’. Talking about the Newport show, frontman Samuel Wagenaar Jenkins described the feeling of getting ready to play in front of local fans again as “strange”, and “like a distant memory in some ways, but also like we had played a gig the night before”. He continued by calling the feeling of doing a hometown gig “electrifying”, and announcing that “It’s a blessing to be doing this again!” The Newport band, which began as a bedroom project in the city in 2017, has grown since with support slots for the likes of VANT and plenty of the band’s own shows too.
Finding Aurora. Image credit: Mitchell Williams @mitchellsvisuals
taking “heavy influence” from later 1990s grunge and “melding with the resonance” of punk and classic rock from the 1970s and 1980s. Tickets for the show are on sale via Dice and cost £7.50 each, with doors at 7pm.
An Oktoberfest-inspired bar is choosing Cardiff as its first UK location as it plans to expand from its Scandinavian origins.
At present, Heidi’s boasts fourteen bars across Denmark and Norway, and a further two in Finland, making Cardiff its first foray out of the Nordic region. There have been other recent changes on the street too, with Mill Lane also welcoming gin bar and kitchen Gin Ne Sais Quoi. It has expanded from its Swansea location this year to take over the area previously occupied by Gourmet Burger Kitchen and Carluccio’s.
Increased calls for defibrillators to be installed across Wales Following the death of local cricketer Maqsood Anwar, there have been calls for defibrillators to be installed at sports clubs around Wales. The father-of-three, who played for Sully Centurions Cricket Club, uffered a heart attack and died during a match last July. The Welsh Rugby Union and charity Calon Hearts have teamed up to ensure that defibrillators are installed at all Wales clubs.
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INTERVIEW
Lettings agency starts up own company with a difference just before Covid-19 Lettings agency director Ryan Clemson had to deal with a global pandemic months after starting up the business, but there are reasons to be optimistic
“I knew the area a little bit more and in London, the overheads are pretty grand compared to Cardiff, to
get going,” he smiles, “and the contacts I had here before helped me get into that a bit easier.” Someone helping me apply for jobs said I’d be a good lettings negotiator so I walked into an agency here, handed over my CV and within two weeks was working there,” Ryan finishes.
Getting things started He was at the agency for 18 months before spotting a gap in the market “to maybe do it a little bit better” and starting his own company, “but if I have, who knows?” he laughs.
“We’re not growing as fast as we would have because we’re not taking on the worst side of the property portfolio,” he continues, Of course, the worst of the pandemic looks to be behind us, and Ryan explains that people are becoming more confident again in terms of going for properties, something that’s “pretty tricky” when all you’ve got to go on is a video, as it’s not the same as looking at a property in person. He explains: “Especially when you’re going onto the sales market – you’re parting with half a million quid over video? It’s not going to work, is it? “We’re getting there this year and are starting to come back to normal slowly,” he continues. He calls the current market “crazy”, with many
“Fingers crossed, everything’s back to normal. But we just have to see how it goes!” properties not even making it onto the market due to the demand. He explains that over the next few years, he’s hoping to “take a little bit more of a backseat in terms of the lets from students”, with a lot on his plate at the moment. Describing the workload as a “bit of a killer”, he’d like to see two teams: one looking after lettings and one looking after sales, but of course, things aren’t always predictable. Ryan started Uniek Residential in 2019, months before the start of the pandemic Credit: Adam England
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yan Clemson, director of Uniek Residential in the Cathays area of Cardiff, cut his teeth at other local agencies before taking the leap into starting up his own company in 2019, those halcyon days just before the world got thrown into almost unprecedented chaos. The 27-yearold has roots in mid-Wales but spent time working in events management in England before returning to Wales to get into this line of work.
than us have struggled. Luckily, our overheads are quite low.
Just how did the pandemic affect the directors, and the business as a whole, however? “Last year was sort of damage limitation really,” admits Ryan. “Fully fledged businesses a lot bigger
“Fingers crossed, everything’s back to normal. But we just have to see how it goes – not jump to conclusions and try to grow too soon,” he concludes. “Because, as you can see from the last two years, anything can happen.”
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FEATURE
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FEATURE
The struggle to find nonChristmas greetings cards in Cardiff and beyond It’s perhaps unsurprising that Christmas dominates the greetings card market, but finding a card for another holiday, even in the Welsh capital, can be near impossible
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hile it might feel surprising that in a large and diverse city like Cardiff finding greetings cards for religious occasions – Christmas aside – is so difficult, for people who observe these other holidays and festivals, it’s a familiar reality.
Despite a real variety of holidays and celebrations being celebrated throughout the year, it can be difficult to find relevant greetings cards without seeking out smaller sellers online. Take Diwali, for instance. There are over 800,000 Hindus in the UK, per the 2011 Census, and over 400,000 Sikhs, many of whom also celebrate the holiday, yet a trip through the city centre of Cardiff in the days leading up to Diwali in search for greetings cards proved almost entirely fruitless. According to the latest estimates
from Stats Wales, there are 55,500 Muslims in Wales and 84,400 people who follow a religion aside from Christianity or Islam. While these might be small numbers when compared to the three million people in Wales altogether, this is still an awful lot of people.
Around the UK It’s a UK-wide issue, too. Moya lives in Hertfordshire and is Jewish, but had to travel to Golders Green, which has a large Jewish population (Finchley and Golders Green is the political constituency with the largest Jewish population in the UK) to find any Jewish holiday cards: “Aware as I am that the UK is predominantly white Christian as a nation, there is a huge diverse culture of people living here which come from all over the world and the Jewish community is one of them.
“There is a demand for these cards to be sold which, if market research was undertaken, would suggest there is a large enough selling point for multicultural/faith holiday cards to be sold that are not exclusively Christmas-based.” Where high street retailers are failing, however, independent creators are doing their best to fill the gap in the market. Sites like Thortful and Etsy stock myriad cards from designers, celebrating everything from Hanukkah and Diwali to even contemporary and secular events like National Grandparents Day. One such designer is Natalia Gonzalez, whose cards are sold via Thortful and range from jovial beer-themed birthday cards to those which celebrate Diwali, Hanukkah and even Kwanzaa.
Throughout Cardiff, Christmas cards reign supreme. Image credit: Adam England
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FEATURE Natalia explains that she’s always on the lookout for ideas and holidays to illustrate, discovering traditions and researching them to find out more: “I love to come up with pretty and modern designs for traditional holidays,” she explains, “if I had enough time I would like to cover all of them just because I think they are very interesting.” While realizing that the focus is on the most popular holidays simply because of demand, Natalia thinks “it would be nice if anyone could find a card to celebrate their favourite holiday.”
The retailer fighting back John Lewis, the only retailer visited in Cardiff to stock Diwali cards, makes a particular effort to provide inclusive products representative of a number of religions. Sarah Moughtin,
recent weeks has been criticised by some as “woke”, is the exception, not the rule.
Double standards? Is it part of a wider pattern? The UK’s official religion is Christianity, and in the 2011 Census almost 60% of people in England and Wales described themselves as Christian, but while a focus on Christianity is to be expected, are other religions being treated – if not with outright disrespect – incredibly flippantly? Back in 2020, the then Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock announced just three hours before Eid that there were to be new restrictions on mixing, scuppering plans for many. Come the end of the year, amid calls to ‘save Christmas’, the double standards were pointed out by many across the media – it probably wouldn’t be a stretch to
“Not having holiday cards that aren’t white Christian-based is an act of institutionalised exclusion” - Moya Partner and Buyer, Greetings Cards says the company are proud to help customers celebrate a range of religious events with not only greetings cards but instore popups to help find food, drink and gifts. “Within our buying team, we work with our Faith network to ensure designs are appropriate and that we continue to educate ourselves on each occasion…We know there is still more to do but are proud of the important work we have achieved to date to make our selection of products more inclusive,” she claims. However, it might be fair to say that the department store, which even in
view the lack of diverse cards as a symptom of a much wider issue. Some might argue that, in the grand scheme of things, greetings cards aren’t a particularly big deal. After all, there are plenty of options online. However, when only one of the multiple retailers visited in Cardiff stocks Diwali cards, and when people have to travel to London simply to find a card for Hanukkah, this becomes contentious. As Natalia says, “Knowing about the traditions and holidays of other cultures make us feel closer to them
and keep us interested in what’s different, so I think those holidays deserve more presence in the greetings card business.” “I think [retailers] need to ste up their game as not having any holiday cards that aren’t white Christian-based is an act of institutionalised exclusion of other cultures,” Moya adds. With so many holidays at the end of the year, is it too much to ask for high street retailers to stock cards for them all, and not just Christmas? There are millions of people across the UK, and over 100,000 in Wales, who are being ignored.
Religious/Cultural Holiday Calendar 2022 There are plenty of festivals each year, and 2022 is no different. Here are some of the major holidays to look forward to.
Holi – 17-18 March Vaisakhi – 14 April Easter Sunday – 17 April Eid al-Fitr: 2-3 May Vesak – 6 May Eid al-Adha: 9-13 July Yom Kippur – 4-5 October Diwali – 24 October Hanukkah – 18-26 December Christmas – 25 December Kwanzaa – 26 December-1 January
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