40+ Years a Celebration

Jane Hutt
First Minister Mark Drakeford speaking about Riverside and the future of Wales …

Fireworks, Sikhs and Paint …

Barbara Castle – was the first paid worker for SRCDC after receiving a grant in 1975. Barbara was able to secure additional funding which led fo further development.

Other workers were employed including long time trustee – Jaswant Singh.

Some images from the day …

Check back here for more media from this celebration.

Steve’s Riverside Poem – Steve Garrett 2019

I came here to live more than 25 years ago;
laying my burden ‘down by the Riverside’
as many had before me,
feeling that I had arrived somewhere that was not just a place,
but a location – with a spirit of peaceful co-existence
as richly diverse as the creatures
drawn to live in, and alongside, its neighbouring waters.

From its start in the Brecon Beacons
until it gets to us, its last stop before meeting the sea,
squeezed between the Stadium and the Sunday Market;
our River is full of hope, and full of life;
rising and falling with the passage of times and tides
in the seasonal cycles of scarcity and abundance –
which remind us that our lives are tied
to a nature we cannot control.

Living by this river means we are connected by water to other Riversiders
all over the world;
and with a boat, and enough time, we could reach any of them from here.
Rivers run – they can’t stand still; always going places!
Rivers go with the flow,
and Rivers know that, like the water they carry
sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Smart people have always lived next to rivers;
knowing them to be a source of food and irrigation ; transport and energy.
So rivers are at the heart of many of the world’s greatest cities,
with names better known than the buildings which grew alongside them;
The Thames; the Mersey; the Nile; the Ganges; the Seine….. and the Taff.

The Zambezi river in Africa is one of the world’s largest,
with its own god, called Nyaminyami
who has the body of a fish and the head of a snake.
The many people who live next to, and depend on, that river
are careful never to upset Nyaminyami by disrespecting its waters;
because they believe that disaster will follow.
We should treat our River and the people who live beside it
with the same level of respect.
to make sure its river spirit never punishes us again
by pouring water into our streets and houses.
And we should always appreciate the special connectedness
that all of us who live here have with the water,
and with each other”.