Artsmonkey Blog

Rugby is a bone crunching, awesome game when viewed from the heady heights of the Millenium Stadium, Cardiff. Choreography, speed, teamwork, body mass, muscle and nerve all come into play. This weekend’s Wales versus the Springboks (South Africa) brought 74k people to huddle under the roof of this city centre based stadium, causing network rail to galvanise staff at Cardiff Central into various attempts at shepherding those visiting safely in and out of the station (I wonder where the 6,000 people who didn’t make it got to?). Some shops saw fit to close before the game ended and I can see why, seventy four thousand people leaving a venue is quite a sight and it occured to me that if everyone there dropped a penny in the bucket that members of the Armed Forces were holding on behalf of the charity ‘Help for Heroes’ that would have been an easy seven hundred and forty pounds made, but it looked to me like most people had already spent their money on several pints of beer; I’m not a regular Rugby match attender but it does seem that this is as much a necessity as having a ticket.

It’s a sporting month in the youth arts universe; this month saw the launch of Arts Award Football Academies, an example of football and art coming together to work with young people on creative activities to gain a qualification. Already I have noted the almost dance-like grace of the Springboks where their defense was almost a choreographed routine taking them from one side of the pitch to the other with the Welsh team crashing about around them, literally like bulls in a China shop (Wales I was cheering for you, honest!) and I can see how the arts and sports are really not so different, who’s that rugby player gracefully holding his own in ‘Strictly Come Dancing’?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 06:57 pm and is filed under sharing, Culture, Youth Arts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.