Hay Castle Events

The perfect start to your Festive Season with an evening of Christmas music from Maritimum Wind – our resident ensemble wind quintet of students from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.

The group will be playing a mix of traditional and contemporary Christmas music and carols and there’ll also be words, mulled wine, mince pies and Christmas Cheer.

Enjoy the evening in the beautiful setting of the Great Hall, specially decorated for Christmas and wrap yourself in some yuletide cheer!

Maritimum are:
Flute - Maisy Shaw
Oboe - Lewis Sinclair
French Horn - Adam Muxworthy
Bassoon - Gabriel Adshead
Clarinet - Molly Bradley
With readings from Lou Broadbent and Caroline Hafner.

10% of all tickets sales will go to Shelter Cymru supporting homes for everyone this Christmas - Shelter Cymru - Home is everything

Make a Christmas Wreath in the beautiful surroundings of Hay Castle.

Unleash your inner artist with an array of festive materials all included in the price.

Enjoy a glass of prosecco whilst creating a beautiful wreath for your home.

The perfect start to your festive season with this creative and fun workshop.

£45.00 per person

All materials, a glass of bubbly and laughter included!

WREATH MAKING NOW SOLD OUT

Life drawing takes place in the Clore Learning Space every Monday from 11am until 4pm.

PLEASE NOTE NEW LATER STARTING TIME OF 11AM



Please bring your own materials

The sessions cost £16 for the full day from 10-4pm and £10 for a morning or afternoon session only.

The morning session starts at 11am so please arrive at about 10.45am

The afternoon session starts at 1:45pm so please arrive at least 10 mins beforehand

11 - 12 - Drawing
12 - 12.15 - Break
12.15 - 1.15 - Drawing
1.15 - 1.45 - Lunch
1.45 - 2.45 - Drawing
2.45 - 3pm - Break
3 - 4pm - Drawing

Print Club is run by our resident printmaker - Aidan Saunders - AKA Prints of Hay.

This fortnightly Print Club will take place in our Clore Learning Space every other Wednesday between 4pm and 6pm

The idea is to provide a place for any other people who are looking to develop their printing skills including students working on their GCSE 2nd year, A levels, BTEC or Foundation course - with a friendly atmosphere where ideas and the joy of printmaking can be shared by all.

Print Club costs £5 per session - so only £10 a month. Some materials will be provided and there will be access to the printing press when accompanied by Aidan.

This club will develop according to the needs and requirements of the members of the group - so why not come along and become a part of Print Club.

DONATIONS FOR MATERIALS ARE MUCH APPRECIATED - WE HAVE A DONATION BOX

Start your Christmas shopping with a range of 30 different stalls from ceramics to jewellery, knitwear to basketry, metalwork to prints and photography.

A range of gift ideas for everybody.

Plus a reindeer hunt in the grounds for kids

Thank you to the following companies for their kind sponsorship:

Hay Cheesemarket
GB Liners
Hay Castle Café
Hay Markets
Jackson & Gill Opticians
Shobden Airfield
West Ent AV

Life drawing takes place in the Clore Learning Space every Monday from 11am until 4pm.

PLEASE NOTE NEW LATER STARTING TIME OF 11AM



Please bring your own materials

The sessions cost £16 for the full day from 10-4pm and £10 for a morning or afternoon session only.

The morning session starts at 11am so please arrive at about 10.45am

The afternoon session starts at 1:45pm so please arrive at least 10 mins beforehand

11 - 12 - Drawing
12 - 12.15 - Break
12.15 - 1.15 - Drawing
1.15 - 1.45 - Lunch
1.45 - 2.45 - Drawing
2.45 - 3pm - Break
3 - 4pm - Drawing

‘One Christmas was so much like another in those days…’
Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales is a seasonal favourite in Wales and beyond, and this wonderful evocation of a child's delight at the festive season has become famous the world over.

This timeless Christmas classic story is performed as a monologue by award-winning actor Adrian Metcalfe. The piece has been charming audiences, young and old, ever since its publication over half a century ago. Lighthouse use their unique style to bring new life to the colourful characters of Thomas' Swansea childhood.

What better way to prepare for Christmas than a glass and a memory that only Swansea can produce?

Performed by Adrian Metcalfe, this festive entertainment has been described by the press as 'masterful one-person story-telling' and 'perfect festive fare'.

This production is produced with the help of the Swansea Grand Theatre, the Arts Council and NightOut.

Life drawing takes place in the Clore Learning Space every Monday from 11am until 4pm.

PLEASE NOTE NEW LATER STARTING TIME OF 11AM



Please bring your own materials

The sessions cost £16 for the full day from 10-4pm and £10 for a morning or afternoon session only.

The morning session starts at 11am so please arrive at about 10.45am

The afternoon session starts at 1:45pm so please arrive at least 10 mins beforehand

11 - 12 - Drawing
12 - 12.15 - Break
12.15 - 1.15 - Drawing
1.15 - 1.45 - Lunch
1.45 - 2.45 - Drawing
2.45 - 3pm - Break
3 - 4pm - Drawing

Print Club is run by our resident printmaker - Aidan Saunders - AKA Prints of Hay.

This fortnightly Print Club will take place in our Clore Learning Space every other Wednesday between 4pm and 6pm

The idea is to provide a place for any other people who are looking to develop their printing skills including students working on their GCSE 2nd year, A levels, BTEC or Foundation course - with a friendly atmosphere where ideas and the joy of printmaking can be shared by all.

Print Club costs £5 per session - so only £10 a month. Some materials will be provided and there will be access to the printing press when accompanied by Aidan.

This club will develop according to the needs and requirements of the members of the group - so why not come along and become a part of Print Club.

DONATIONS FOR MATERIALS ARE MUCH APPRECIATED - WE HAVE A DONATION BOX

This is for artists wishing to pay their entry for the Open Show in January and February 2024.

Entries cost £20 each and there is a maximum of two entries per artist.

Once you have paid the entry fee please make sure you fill in the form. You will be provided with a link to submit your artwork, along with dimensions and photographs. The photographs are important as this is what the panel will use to choose submissions.

All entries will be chosen anonymously.

A dark tale of vampiric infatuation, based upon Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, in words and music.

Laura - Gemma Aukett
The Book - Graeme Hobbs
The Music - Dafydd Roberts and John Whatling

OUPIRE* – being a treatment, by excision, of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1871-72), presented in words and music.

Carmilla is an extraordinary novella, with a characteristic of its writing being that the book itself seems to have an unconscious which know more about the motivations of the characters than they do themselves. This led to the book, Oupire, in which strands of text, excised from the original, weave around each other and tell the tale in the two voices of the narrator and the book. Here, those voices are presented against a background of appropriately eerie music. More about the book can be seen here: https://fallowpages.art/oupire

* Oupire: an alternative word for vampire; Le Fanu uses the words interchangeably in Carmilla.

We’re delighted to announce that the celebrated Library of Mistakes will be in residence at Hay Castle, 1st-3rd March 2024

Join historians, financial experts, investment sages for a wealth of wisdom, and enjoy a weekend of financial booms and busts, bubbles, swindles, panics and crashes.

A Weekend of Mistakes that offers you insights from the past - and some key lessons for your financial future!

Talks planned include:

• Piracy, kidnapping and money-laundering - and other weekend hobbies
• 'The Price of Time'- Interest rates past, present … and future?
• 'The Madness of Crowds': lessons from great bubbles of history
• The next financial crisis - coming to a global super-power near you?
• Self-deception and other classic investor mistakes
• The discreet charm of the con artist - why we fall for them every time
• Banks, a confidence trick that works… most of the time
• The Energy Transition – myths, mistakes & realities

(Programme may vary)