Guest blog: Does the NATO Summit basket of goodies sum up what the people of Wales see in themselves?

Today’s guest blog is from Rebecca Price, MD of brand identity specialists Frank, Bright and Abel.

I was struck by the challenge of selecting symbols of Wales in the gifts for world leaders at the NATO summit in Newport last week. (My own view follows in the next blog.)

Does the NATO Summit basket of goodies sum up what the people of Wales see in themselves?

So who better to ask for comment than a Welsh brand-identity expert.

I was looking for a couple of lines: Rebecca has sent me an eloquent essay on her national identity.

Thank you, Rebecca.

“Hosting the NATO Summit has pushed Wales right to the top of the headlines. Perhaps now people beyond the principality will stop saying Wales is in England, which prompts a question about what defines Welsh identity.

What best sums up and symbolises Welshness is something that could be the subject of several books. Despite being hammered every bit as much as the Scots (and Wales’s beautiful castles are testament to this), the resultant response in expression of national identity is less overt, but no less potent, than either the Scottish or Irish identities. Welsh identity is as subtle as its countryside, with surprising differences between North and South, my own Wales starting at Swansea and ending at St David’s. 

The willow hampers gifted at the NATO summit were fantastic and prompt the question about what I might have crammed them full of. I would have packed them full of Welsh food: healthy, hearty, unfussy and straight from the landscape. There’s always a welcome in the hillside and that often starts with food. 

First there would be fish and shellfish, not least razor clams plucked from the sand of Gower, together with health giving lava bread, the seaweed available only from that tiny stretch of coast. Secondly, there would be plenty available for tea time. Welsh cakes, a bakestone loaf, bara brith (buttered of course) and Glengettie tea. If there were any space left, I’d fill it with vegetables from Pembrokeshire, a bottle of the air that makes me sigh when I step onto the beach at Rhossili, a rug from Melin Tregwynt to sit on and a Welsh Love Spoon to eat it all with!

We Welsh are an expressive lot. You see this played out in rugby grounds throughout the South, in chapel and in the cultural National Eisteddfod. Music is not limited to male voice choirs, singing Calon Lan on a Sunday and the harp, and you’ll hear Delilah sung from the terraces of Llanelli’s rugby stands, as well as today's charts full of Welsh performers. A bit of How Green was my Valley still lives on, but Welshness hasn’t stopped evolving since. So the NATO hampers, would be incomplete without music. 

They would be incomplete without Dylan Thomas too, that giant amongst men whom we’ve been late to honour, dismissed by the English for being too Welsh and scorned by the Welsh for writing in English. 

But what ultimately defines Welsh identity is the people. From Neil Kinnock to Tom Jones, from Rhys Ifans to my mum’s 'pillar of the local chapel' next door neighbour, we’re people with heart, gently self mocking, who never take ourselves too seriously. I am who I am, because I’m Welsh. Being Welsh means I talk to people on the Underground. And that I talk too much. 

It means just like the inhabitants of Llaregubb, I find nicknames for everyone I know. It means I love language,  call my son ‘cariad’ and write profusely, in my own rather idiosyncratic style. 

It means I’m direct, with no varnish or gloss and laugh to the toes of my shoes.

Above all it means I have something that pulls at me when I see the Severn Bridge and makes me feel I belong, when I cross it – ‘hiraeth’, an example of singular Welsh identity so strong, that there is no direct translation into English.”

Rebecca Price

Frank, Bright & Abel