Find out what’s on in South Wales this week
It’s time for 2015 to come in a sweep 2014 off its feet! You can forget all the embarrassing moments and bad decisions of the past year and daydream optimistically about how your life will change in the next twelve months!
Though some of us will opt to stay in and watch Jools Holland in a onesie there are plenty of nights out to choose from for NYE! There is a fine looking electronic music line-up at Chapter’s New Years Eve 2014 party (Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Wed 31 Dec. Tickets: £25 – includes a glass of fizz and a bite to eat), as Bass Clef / R. Seiliog / Gwenno / Macho City will be making noise at the arts centre.
You can start 2015 in a super duper manner as Gwdihw hosts a Heroes & Villains New Years Eve Ball (Cardiff, Wed 31 Dec. Tickets: £3 early bird / £6 advance / £8 on the door). You can choose to enter the New Year on the side of good or evil (the best dressed wins a free bar tab) and listening to funk, soul, afrobeat, electro and house.
You can see rapper Professor Green bringing out his hits Read All About It and Lullaby at NYE with Professor Green (Tiger Tiger, Cardiff, Wed 31 Dec. Tickets: £15 / £25-£30 dinner tickets) or giggle into 2015 with the Glee Club’s The Best In Live Stand-Up Comedy: New Year’s Eve Show (Glee Club, Cardiff Bay, Wed 31 Dec. Tickets: £30) as Mark Olver, Mike Bubbins, Andrew Stanley and Sol Bernstein stand up to get you laughing.
The Globe at Hay is going old school with its New Years Eve Vintage Party (Hay on Wye, Wed 31 Dec. Tickets: £12 / £10 advance). There will be live soul music, Prosecco and a good old-fashioned knees-up.
Something Creatives are also embracing a vintage feel at their Harlequin: A Magical New Years Eve party (Jacobs Market, Cardiff, Wed 31 Dec. Tickets: standard tickets sold out / £65 Supper Club tickets – includes three course meal). They will be taking over the multi-storeyed Jacobs Market and filling each floor with something different: there will be a Studio 54 party in the loft, a speakeasy in the basement, a supper club in dining room and fireworks and street food BBQ on the roof top.
And now for something completely different… Mari Llwyd New Year Walk In (Llanwrtyd Wells, Powys, Wed 31 Dec. Tickets £3). I mean who need champers when you have horse skulls? This traditional Welsh celebration sees the people of Powys leading a procession of burning torches, along with the ‘Mari’ (a decorated horse skull), around the town before celebrations in the town square when the clock strikes twelve.
After all that celebrating on New Year’s Eve you might need a good shock to the system to wake you up properly. How about a dip in the sea? Barry Island’s New Years Day Swim (Whitmore Bay, Barry, Thurs 1 Jan. Admissions: free) was founded in 1984 and it gets more brave swimmers every year, this New Years they will be doing so in the hopes of raising lots of money for the Teenage Cancer Trust.
After the financial toll of Christmas and the amount of money drunkenly spent buying everyone rounds on NYE, you might be looking to entertain yourself cheaply in January. The Free For All Festival (Full Moon, Cardiff, Sat 3-Sat 31 Jan. Admissions: free) is a low cost way to enjoy music at the start of the year. The month long festival has free live music every night, and a line-up that includes the first ever Welsh Beatbox Championships.
For some more culture the King Street Gallery will be kicking off the new year with its open exhibition Carnival (Carmarthen, Fri 2-Mon 29 Jan. Admissions: free) where all the colour and culture of carnival spirit will be expressed in fine art, ceramics, photography, stained glass, wood turning, textiles and sculptures.
