UNBOXED in Wales

The UNBOXED programme in Wales kicks off today with the opening of About Us, a spectacular, free open-air event exploring 13.8 billion years of history from the Big Bang to the current day. 

At dusk, Caernarfon Castle and Y Maes will be transformed into a vast canvas combining awe-inspiring live projection-mapped animation with poetry, music, and live Welsh choirs performing a brand-new score by Nitin Sawhney CBE. Welsh poets, Grug Muse and Llŷr Gwyn Lewis have written new poems for the About Us live shows, presented in both Welsh and English. By day, LED video installations showcase the creativity of children and young people from primary schools in Gwynedd through poems and Scratch animations.

The 2022 Welsh UNBOXED programme also explores everything from the hidden histories of Newport and Swansea to the stories of people and place in the landscapes of Anglesey, the Brecon Beacons and The Gower, Welsh heritage and identity is one the key themes of the programme in Wales. Universal ideas about environmental sustainability and the different ways in which each of us perceives the world are also explored as the programme looks to the future.

- GALWAD: A story from our future, commissioned by Creative Wales, will see Wales' boldest talent in screen, performance and creative technology create a multi-platform story with participants across Wales, to unfold in real-time over a week. GALWAD explores a possible future in 30 years-time located in Blaenau Ffestiniog, Merthyr Tydfil and Swansea. A creative and ambitious act of collective imagination from and by Wales, GALWAD is inspired by a piece of legislation that is unique to Wales, the Well Being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and will invite you to explore the moral dilemmas and possibilities of a different kind of future.

- Green Space Dark Skies invites 20,000 people to participate in the creation of vast outdoor artworks in some of the UK’s outstanding landscapes. Community groups and members of the public have been recruited to become ‘Lumenators’ for five events in Wales, including Anglesey, the Brecon Beacons and Gower, that explore the stories of those locations and people’s connection to them.

- Dreamachine is a powerful new kind of immersive experience exploring the limitless potential of the human mind. It will be presented in Cardiff from 12 May. Free tickets available from today (30 March). (www.dreamachine.world) Dreamachine has been created by Collective Act which brings together Turner Prize-winning artists Assemble, Grammy and Mercury nominated composer Jon Hopkins, and a team of leading technologists, scientists and philosophers.

- StoryTrails uses new developments in 3D internet technology in one of the most ambitious living history and archive projects ever undertaken. Audiences’ will see Newport and Swansea transformed by previously untold stories through augmented reality. Creatives from Wales have been recruited to realise this project which involves historian and broadcaster, David Olusoga OBE.