Spotlight On: FIYA Creative and Muriau Mawr
From Dylan Thomas and Swansea’s natural environment to community voices and iconic city landmarks, a series of large-scale artworks is bringing local stories, colour and creativity onto walls across Swansea city centre.
We meet FIYA Creative founder Hasan Kamil to find out more about Muriau Mawr, the communities helping to shape it and the ambition to give artists space to think bigger.
Muriau Mawr – translated as ‘Great Walls’ – is an ambitious public art project bringing artists, communities and partners together to create large-scale murals across Swansea city centre, alongside a series of smaller works that will help form a dedicated mural trail through the city.
Funded by Arts Council of Wales, the project was conceived and developed by Swansea-based FIYA Creative CIC, turning prominent walls into public artworks inspired by Swansea’s people, culture, stories and surroundings, creating a free and accessible cultural experience woven into everyday life. Community engagement and project coordination is being delivered in partnership with MIOE CIC, which works with local groups to gather stories, ideas and creative responses that can inform the artists’ designs. AKA Media is documenting the project through photography and film, capturing the murals, engagement sessions, artist insights and public reactions as the trail develops.
Each work has its own artist, story and creative process.
- At the JT Morgan Building on Grove Place, international artist duo Krims and Kitsune Jolene have created a mural inspired by Dylan Thomas (see below). Local writers took part in an engagement session at the Dylan Thomas Exhibition, sharing their own interpretations of his work to help inform the artists’ surrealist response. The mural has been sponsored by Beacon.
- At Park Street, artist Gareth Lye is developing a mural supported by Swansea Council.The artist worked with young people from Circus Eruption, using drawing activities to generate characters and ideas that fed into the final design. Drawing on Gareth’s distinctive character-based style, the work features Swansea Castle alongside a cast of imaginative creatures shaped by that community input.
- At Kings Lane, artist Curtis Hylton is creating a mural supported by Beacon and Arts Council of Wales. Known for large-scale, nature-inspired work, Curtis is exploring Swansea’s natural environment, with consultation involving local environmentalists helping to inform the design.
- A further mural by muralist and lettering artist Zoe Power is planned for Swansea Arena, bringing together themes of women’s voices, the Welsh language and music. The work is supported by the Arts Council of Wales.
Together, the works show how public art can bring a different kind of creative experience into the city: one rooted in its communities and identity but interpreted through the distinctive styles of individual artists.
Muriau Mawr has been made possible with funding from the Arts Council of Wales, with project delivery support from Swansea Council and sponsorship from organisations across the city.
Alongside its sponsorship of the Park Street mural, Swansea Council is supporting the wider programme through partnership working and practical support around delivery, helping connect public art activity with its wider ambitions for culture, placemaking and regeneration. This sits alongside other Council-supported and commissioned creative interventions across the city.
Cllr Elliott King, Cabinet Member for Culture, Human Rights and Equality, said:
“Art and culture play an important role in Swansea’s economy, identity and sense of place. They create value for communities and help shape a positive experience for residents and visitors alike. Muriau Mawr brings ambition at scale to public art in the city, adding to a growing programme of murals and creative interventions – from temporary artwork soon to be seen on construction hoardings near the former St David’s Square to permanent wall murals in significant city spaces, including Mowbray Yard.”
It all contributes to a wider ambition to bring creativity into everyday view across Swansea, strengthening local identity while helping create places that feel distinctive, welcoming and alive.
Bringing the idea home
For Hasan Kamil, the idea behind Muriau Mawr grew from years of seeing what ambitious public art could do elsewhere – and wanting to bring some of that energy back to his home city.
Hasan lived in Bristol for 13 years and has worked on mural festivals and large-scale public art projects across the UK and internationally. After moving back to Swansea almost two years ago, he felt there was an opportunity to create something here on a scale he had not seen before.
“After returning from the MUQY mural project in Newquay, I had a real burning desire to bring that same ambition to Swansea city centre,” he says.
“It was important that the artwork was world-class, showing what could be achieved while inspiring local artists to think bigger.”
Hasan established FIYA Creative CIC with his partner Brittany shortly after the birth of their daughter, Safiya, whose name inspired the organisation.
Today, the Swansea-based CIC develops and delivers public art projects, murals and creative workshops that work closely with communities.
As curator and project lead for Muriau Mawr, Hasan’s role stretches well beyond painting. He oversees the creative vision and delivery of the project, from building partnerships and securing locations to selecting artists, coordinating community engagement and navigating the practical challenge of bringing artwork to life on an enormous scale.
For Hasan, that scale is part of the attraction, but so is the accessibility.
“Murals have always been my passion because of their ability to completely transform a space. They create a free outdoor gallery for everyone to enjoy and give people something positive to connect with and take pride in.” he says.
Pictured above is ‘ Passing Through Time’ the second of five large scale murals to be completed in Swansea city centre as part of Muriau Mawr. Belgian artist @kitsunejolene and Australian artist @krimsone travelled from Australia to transform the former JT Morgan building, now home to Elysium Gallery.
The mural was informed by a community engagement session delivered with MIOE CIC at the Dylan Thomas Centre, where local poets explored Dylan Thomas’s work. From these conversations, the artists developed their own contemporary visual interpretation of his poetry. The result is a vibrant piece that brings a fresh perspective to one of Wales’ most celebrated poets as well as a landmark artwork to Swansea city centre.
Starting with people
As with much good art in the public realm, community engagement is an important part of how Muriau Mawr works.
MIOE CIC works in partnership with Hasan and the mural artists to create opportunities for different groups across Swansea to contribute ideas, memories and perspectives relevant to individual works. Its role includes facilitating engagement sessions, gathering stories and creative material, and helping translate those contributions into accessible briefs for the artists.
Those conversations have ranged from young people creating characters with Gareth Lye, to local writers interpreting the work of Dylan Thomas and environmentalists discussing Swansea’s wildlife and natural surroundings.
Hasan attends the engagement sessions and works with the participating artists as those contributions begin to inform their ideas.
Importantly, community input and the artist’s own creative identity are designed to work alongside one another.
“The aim is for people to recognise something of themselves, their community or their city within the murals and feel a sense of ownership and pride in them,” Hasan explains.
The result is artwork that can feel connected to Swansea without asking every artist to tell its stories in the same way.
Giving Swansea’s artists room to grow
Muriau Mawr isn’t only about what appears on the finished walls. Another ambition is to help create opportunities for artists themselves – particularly local and emerging creatives looking to develop their practice.
The project includes a scale-up initiative, giving selected artists the chance to create work at a significantly larger scale alongside established mural artists. The wider first phase has also been designed to create opportunities for emerging artists through smaller works and partnerships with creative and education organisations across Swansea.
It creates opportunities for practical skills and experience to be shared, while giving emerging talent the confidence to consider bigger public-facing commissions in future.
That sense of possibility resonates with Hasan. During his years in Bristol, he saw how a visible culture of murals and street art could contribute to a city feeling creative and open, not just for established artists, but for people looking at the work and wondering whether there might be a place for them too.
“I want to bring some of that same energy to Swansea and create that feeling of, ‘I could do that too,’” he says.
For Swansea’s wider creative community, opportunities to make ambitious work in public spaces can offer a platform, experience and visibility that can be difficult to replicate elsewhere. For everyone else, they make creativity part of the city itself.
There is no gallery door to walk through and no ticket to buy. The encounter might simply happen on the way to work, while shopping, meeting friends or exploring Swansea.
Changing the everyday
That everyday impact is already one of Hasan’s favourite responses to the project.
“It has already been amazing to hear people say that the artwork has brightened their walk to work and transformed places they previously overlooked,” he says.
“What were once tired, drab corners of the city are now vibrant public artworks with a real sense of belonging.”
It is a simple illustration of the role creativity can play in placemaking.
For the communities involved, the murals offer an opportunity to see local ideas and stories reflected on a huge scale. For artists, they offer the space to experiment, collaborate and develop. And for everyone moving through the city, they create new reasons to look up, stop and see a familiar part of Swansea differently.
“I hope visitors see Swansea as a creative and ambitious city,” Hasan says, “while local people feel that these murals are something that belongs to them.”
Want to discover more about Muriau Mawr, the artists involved and the stories behind Swansea’s new murals? Visit www.fiyacreative.com to find out more.
