Opening Up our Heritage: A Positive Response from Cardiff Blues

Earlier this week we published our blog on how history and heritage could be given a greater profile at our beloved Cardiff Arms Park (Blog: Opening Up Our Heritage). Today we were pleased to have had the following response from Mike Brown, Head of Communications and Marketing at Cardiff Blues:

‘Encouragingly, the vast majority of ideas mentioned have already been discussed by our management team and in some cases designs have been drawn up.

Rather than hide our heritage, it is part of our long-term strategy to celebrate it while also respecting and promoting our region. This is why heritage is specifically mentioned in our document, the ‘Cardiff Blues Way’. Some explicit thoughts/responses from us:

• Trophy Room - we have run a number of initiatives to make the Trophy Room more accessible to supporters both on match-days and throughout the week. Further to the Summerfest sessions, Cardiff Blues Supporters Club recently hosted their counterparts from Rugby Calvisano in the room , while pre-arranged tours are available each week with Karl. We are always open to ideas of how to utilise this room more.
• Timeline - We explored the possibility to installing a timeline running from the Quay Street ramp, to the beginning of the fanzone during last season but were unable to justify the expense, particularly at a time when we were moving the squad back to CAP. We have tackled the fanzone and there are further additions such as the installation of historic jerseys currently in place. We remain open to finding a way to install a timeline and would happily work in collaboration with all relevant stakeholders.
• The ‘How you measure up’ signs proved a big success and again we would like to roll these out at various locations around the ground with notable Cardiff and Cardiff Blues players.
• We love the idea of installing historic images of Cardiff Arms Park on site and we can again explore this.
• The walking tours and ideas with QR codes are worthwhile however they would be much more effective as part of a city-wide initiative. Again, we would be happy to collaborate.

We would be more than happy to discuss these suggestions with you further, however it is also important to appreciate the difficulty in making such investments, while our long-term future at CAP is not secure.’

Interestingly, before the Covid crisis, we convened a meeting involving representatives from the Cardiff Museum, Glamorgan Archives, Glamorgan Cricket Club, the Cardiff City Supporters' Trust, the Welsh Rugby Union and CF10 to explore the idea of doing something on a city-wide basis- so we’re already working on that though we’ve not been able to progress matters because of the current difficulties. The group will meet again as soon as it’s able. We’re also having a Zoom conference with Cardiff Blues next week, on which these and other issues will be on the agenda. We’ll let you know how that goes in due course.