The history of the Touch Trust
Touch Trust was born 10 years ago when Dilys Price OBE began campaigning for her ‘Happiness Centre’ for people with special needs.
She and a group of her friends were in the Wadi Rum desert as guests of King Hussein of Jordan and Dilys used a parachute jump over the desert to publicise her plans. They had radio interviews, newspaper articles and even a letter from the King’s Royal Office wishing them well for their project.
It was an exciting start to what was to become an even more exciting journey leading to the Wales Millennium Centre seven years later.
In the early days of Touch Trust, things were run literally from Dilys’ kitchen table and sessions were held in rooms and spaces all over Cardiff. It was often difficult but from these early beginnings, the Touch Trust programme grew in reputation amongst the disabled community in Cardiff and by 1996, it was being suggested that Touch Trust become one of the resident companies in the brand new Wales Millennium Centre. In 1998 the seven companies were named and Touch Trust prepared to move to its new home.
In 2004 Touch Trust moved to its own purpose-built suite in the Wales Millennium Centre (WMC) through the support of the National Assembly of Wales, the WMC Trust and the Arts Council of Wales. Touch Trust now works alongside the other six flagship Arts Residents within the WMC: Welsh National Opera, Urdd Gobaith Cymru, Diversions Dance, Acedemi, Ty Cerdd and Hijinx Theatre Company. They have recently been the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
In those early days at WMC, it was envisaged that we would run 5 sessions per week for people with complex needs. It soon became clear that demand for the Touch Trust programme was far greater than that and very soon we were running 5 sessions per day! People with Autism and behaviour that challenges greatly benefit from our programme and we are providing more and more sessions for these groups. We have also had remarkable results working with very young children and babies and, more recently, people with dementia.
