Documenting the City | Curatorial Reflections (3)

•  (1) John Wilson, Guest Curator

• (2) Roger Cucksey, Keeper of Art
• (3) Newport's Coming of Age as a City

• (4) City status and regeneration
  
• (5) Towards a new social and cultural geography of Newport
• (6) Agenda: Newport Towards 2010
• (7) POSTSCRIPT | May - June 2007 | Newport - Towards a new National Centre for Contemporary Art in Wales?

Newport's Coming of Age as a City 

"Newport has all the qualities needed for a modern city, the Secretary of State for Wales, Paul Murphy, said today (Thursday, 14 March, 2002 ). | He was commenting following the announcement that Her Majesty The Queen has accepted the Lord Chancellor's advice that Newport should be the successful Welsh applicant for city status, to mark the Golden Jubilee. | (...) "This news today I know will be welcomed throughout the town. Standing at the gateway to South Wales, Newport has been an important centre of commerce and administration since at least Roman times. | "Following the Industrial Revolution, its docks made a major contribution to the economic development of the region, while the Chartists gave Newport a unique place in the development of Parliamentary democracy, both here and throughout the world. | "Today Newport is a progressive town which does not simply bask in past glory. It is a community that looks to the future through a thriving and adaptable industrial and commercial base". ( -  Welsh Office, press release, here ).

Documenting the City was conceived as a special exhibition to celebrate Newport's Coming of Age as a city, following Newport's assumption of official city status in 2002 ( - read more here).  

The Newport Chartist Memorial (1991): Union, or The Ideal City.

Modernity, the city, and art: From industrialism to post-industrialism

 Locating the city: From Kelly's Directory to Wikipedia

Today the Web provides the most immediate point of access to Newport's history and current affairs: Newport on Wikipedia:

•  Newport (Welsh: Casnewydd) is the third-largest city in Wales (after Cardiff and Swansea). Standing on the banks of the River Usk, it is the cultural capital and largest urban area of the historic county of Monmouthshire and governed by the unitary Newport City Council. The population of the Newport urban area is in excess of 160,000 inhabitants (est. 2006). |The name Newport comes from the fact that Caerleon was the 'old port' on the river Usk, but as ships became bigger, they could no longer navigate the river to Caerleon so a new port/dock was built near to where the Riverfront Arts Centre stands today. | The Welsh name for the city, Casnewydd-ar-Wysg (IPA: [kasˈnɛʊɪð ar ˈwɪsk]) means 'New castle-on-Usk' (this is a shortened version of Castell Newydd ar Wysg). This refers to the twelfth-century castle ruins near the city centre. The original Newport Castle was a small Motte-and-bailey castle in the park opposite St. Woolos Cathedral. It was buried in rubble excavated from the railway tunnels that were dug under Stow Hill in the 1840s and no part of it is currently visible. |Newport also has the Latin name Novus Burgus, meaning new borough or new town. It is sometimes labelled Newport-on-Usk on old maps.

The public library provides a fascinating archive of the Victorian period of growth, chronicled year by year in commercial publications such as Kelly's Directory (- see for example online Kelly's Directory for Monmouthshire, 1901: Newport ). The shape of the burgeoning industrial city-region of Newport-Monmouthsire was laid out for the Victorian reader with a heady mix of rhetoric and statistics: 

• NEWPORT is a seaport and market town, the head of a petty sessional division, union and county court district and a parliamentary, municipal and county borough, comprising the old borough and parts of the parishes of St. Woollos, Christchurch, and Nash and Maindee, with a station on the Great Western (South Wales) line, 158½ miles from London by rail and , 48 by road, 23 southwest from Monmouth, 12 north-east! from Cardiff, 17½ south-Nyest from Chepstow, 45 east from Swansea, 44 southwest from Gloucester, 40 southwest from Herelord, in the Southern division of the county, hundred of Wentloog, rural deanery of Newport, archdeaconry of Monmouth and diocese of Llandaff: it is seated on the river Usk, 4 miles from its junction with the river Severn. A stone bridge of five arches, erected in the year 18??, by David Edwards and his two sons, and widened and improved in 1866, crosses the river Usk in a line with the High street and near the old castle. | The Great Western railway station in High street (where the whole of the passenger traffic is now concentrated) is on the Gloucester and South Wales branch. In addition to this service the Bristol and South Wales Union, via the Severn tunnel, opened December 1st, 1886, having been thirteen years in formation, the Monmouthshire Eastern and Western Valleys lines, the Great Western in connection ivith the L. and N. W. railway to Hereford and the North, the Brecon and Merthyr line and the L. and N. W. railway (Sirhowy branch) all run into Newport. About 125 passenger trains arrive and depart during the day. The Pontypridd, Caerphilly and Newport railway, opened in 1887, unites the port of Newport with the celebrated coal district of the Rhondda valley. | Newport was anciently called Novus Burgus, or New Town, to distinguish it from the ancient Caerleon; it was also called Castell-Newydd, or Newcastle, because Robert, Earl of Gloucester, a natural son of Henry I erected a castle here, to defend his possessions; from him it descended through many noble families till it became the property of Edward, Duke of Buckingham, on whose of execution the castle and the lordship svere both seized by King Henry VIII. Several towers and some of the walls of the castle are still remaining on the edge of the river, and have been converted into a brewery. | Newport in 1839 was the scene of a formidable Chartist riot, which took place on the morning of Monday, the 4th of November in that year, under the leadership of Mr. John Frost (an ex-magistrate), his son, Master Frost, one Jones of Pontypool, Zephaniah Williams and one J. Llewellyn; 10,000 miners from the collieries and mines in the neighbourhood, armed with pikes, guns, swords and clubs, met in front of the Westgate hotel, where the magistrates, with a few soldiers of the 45th regiment of foot and several constables were assembled; the rioters, having attacked the house, fired on the magistrates and wounded the mayor, Mr. (afterwards Sir Thomas) Phillips; the troops at length returned the fire and shot twenty of the miners dead, dispersing the rest, and Mr. Frost and others being captured were tried and convicted and sentenced to death; the sentence was, however, subsequently commuted to penal servitude, and a pardon was granted in 1856. | Newport, together with Monmouth and Usk, forms the Monmouth parliamentary district constituted by the Reform Act, 1832, and returning one member to Parliament. Newport is divided into fifteen polling districts, and in 1900 contained 8,341 out of a total Of 9,335 voters in the united boroughs. | The first charter of incorporation, granted in the reign of Richard II was confirmed by Henry VII, a new charter was obtained from James I, and by this the borough continued to be governed until the passing of the "Municipal Corporations Act, 1835 " (5 and 6 Wm. IV. c.76), by which the Corporation was remodelled, and now consists of a mayor, 10 aldermen and 32 councillors (...).
  

Today's city shapes are far more multiple and tangled, but nevertheless this fast changing kaleidoscope world is reflected in the ever-updating Wikipedia entry for Newport, only now the reader can contribute to the story through the interactive Internet wiki format. And as a counterpart to Kelly's annual commercial directory, today's enquirer can access business listings through Google Maps UK (-enter Newport in the search box!). 

Locating modern Newport: The industrial frontier

Modern Newport was the product of the industrial frontier, a port for the iron and coal districts of Monmouthshire, whose trade formed part of the global network of British Imperial expansion. Newport and Monmouthshire were a pacesetter of modern democratic aspirations, as the Chartist Insurrection of 1839 erupted as a human protest against the conditions of frontier industrialism. 

Chartism galvanized the municipal sphere in Newport and as the wealth of the town consolidated through the Victorian period Newport took on all the appearance of a Victorian boom town, from the thriving docks to the bustling Commercial Street and the monumental Town Hall. By the year of Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887, the stigma of Chartism and radical protest had been shaken off for a more triumphant celebration of Newport as a Victorian success story, as the South Wales coalfield underpinned the town's commercial and municipal Progress. Here is the Monmouthsire Merlin's editorial for the Jubilee celebrations in 1887:

 

• Fifty Years a Queen
  
  "There is no town in the Kingdom, whose progress has been more marked, than that of Newport during the period of fifty years, which today marks the Jubilee of Her Majesty's reign. On the 20th June 1837, docks were unknown at Newport, the slight railway accommodation to the Borough would in these days be regarded as quite worthless; from the river to High Street a narrow pill slowly wended its way, whilst the width of the roadway did not exceed ten or eleven feet.
  
  In 1837 nearly the whole of the traffic with Newport, was conveyed by the Monmouthshire Canal, whilst passengers had to content themselves with the old stage coaches, carriers vans, and omnibuses. Compared with today Newport was simply a rural village. Its population did not exceed 9000, the inhabited houses being about 1500. Today, the population of the town exceeds 40,000, the number of inhabited houses is fully 7000.
  
  The Alexandra and Newport Docks have been constructed, a perfect network of railways runs into the town, and we are exporting over three million tons of coal per annum.
  
  These particulars, brief though they are, will serve to show the wonderful development of Newport from that day, precisely fifty years ago, when Victoria was informed that she had succeeded to the throne." 

Municipal progress, public education and art institutions

The growth and consolidation of the municipal sphere included a push for public education, and the new Free Library, Museum and Art Gallery and Schools of Science and Art building of 1882 in Dock Street marked the very cynosure of civic pride. "Any one who wants to see a town in the making should visit Newport". enthused London Daily Telegraph correspondent W. Clarke Russel upon a visit to the port of Newport and witnessing the day's  civic celebrations that included the opening of the new free Library and Schools of Science and Art, "one hears of the growth of towns, but here you see the people clapping their hands, and shouting over every development with the delight of a young mother who looks into her baby's mouth and finds new teeth in it".

The push for public education included art education, and the new Newport Technical Institute building of 1912 in Clarence Place marked the climax of a few generations of steady endeavour (Newport's Science and Art Classes having previously been held at the Free Library in Dock Street). The art world has been an integral part of Newport's evolution across the generations. The Twentieth Century was one of growth in the post-45 period, and the Newport College of Art earned itself a solid reputation on the wider British scene. 

The challenge of modernity: Post-industrial strategies 

This detail from the monumental sculpture group commissioned by the Newport public authority to mark the Anniversary of the Chartist Rising is themed Union, or the Ideal City. We may contemplate this theme as capturing the utopian dimension of Newport's democratic vision and aspiration across the generations, seeking to rise beyond the everyday challenge of economics and politics to realize a better human order. 

In recent generations Newport has risen to challenge of modernity in the "post-industrial" era. The monumental Wave sculpture that dominates the city-centre bank of the River Usk was commissioned as a flag-ship landmark to spearhead the town's regeneration strategy at a time when the decline of traditional industries meant that Newport had to compete for new jobs and investment at the regional and global levels.
 

The current dramatic changes in the built environment of Newport represent today's response to modernity's latest phase of challenge and opportunity. The new Newport City Footbridge spearheads today's large-scale city centre regeneration and echoes the Newport Transporter Bridge a century before as a monumental assertion of faith in the future prospects of Newport.

Bridges have enacted Newport's rite of passage into the new century, and in the dramatic skyline composed by both the Newport Transporter Bridge and the Newport City Bridge -- glimpsed in the fleeting glance as the train crosses the river Usk -- we may grasp something of the spirit of modern Newport's rise to the challenge of modernity across the generations that span the industrial and now the post-industrial eras.