It's one thing to greet the availability of Cardiff Council funding to support grassroots music venues with cautious optimism, as I did a week ago. It's quite another to claim that the city's music scene has enjoyed an "amazing revival" since the dark days of 2017.
In fairness to Sophie Williams, the author of the article in question, the use of the offending phrase may well have been the work of a rogue Guardian sub-editor; certainly, Williams' piece is more nuanced than that.
Yet she does still seem to get caught up in the positivity, parroting the council's lines without pausing to consider what the buzzwords might mean and how the vision might actually be realised. The noises might be moderately encouraging, but it's far too soon to trumpet any strategy as a triumph. As for the Cardiff Music City malarkey, the inclination is to quote Alan Partridge to Lynn: "They've rebadged it, you fool!"
I know some people on the ground who read the article and felt gaslit, pointing out that the current reality hardly justifies buoyant boasts. Only in the last few days, Carnedd have been evicted from Willcox House, left homeless at cruelly short notice having been kept in the dark about the sale of the building. In the circumstances, it's entirely understandable why Williams' rose-tinted article has stuck in a few throats.
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