CADi Ha Festival Holywell, Flintshire

The dance festival…. 
that took steps to ban smoking

Since 1998, on the first Saturday of May, Gŵyl CADi Ha (CADi Ha Festival) has brought colour to the centre of Holywell, Flintshire, as hundreds of dancers process up and down the High Street before entertaining audiences at concerts and performances at venues across the town and the surrounding area.

Five years ago, the Festival made the decision to promote all indoor events and concerts as being smoke-free and they haven’t looked back since.

There are records stretching back a couple of centuries of men from the coalmining communities of west Flintshire noting the processional dance taking place on the first day of May. Sometimes the activities would continue for up to a fortnight as men would take their dance and song to other communities as far as Bangor to collect a few pennies.

The dance involved an even number of men with faces blackened with coaldust or applied with burnt cork dressed in white in two lines (one line with red ribbon and the other with blue) carrying white rags processing for a while before stopping to sing.

They were accompanied by two characters the Bili who was dressed in black and the Cadi who wore women’s clothing. These two characters would interact and collect money in a laddle and the words of the song related strongly to the activities.

Chris Bailey, Chair of Gŵyl CADi Ha, said, “Traditional folk dancing takes a lot of energy and demands a certain level of fitness - smoking therefore is not the best idea for any dancer! This is reflected in the fact a number of folk dancing societies in Wales are also smoke-free.

“We wanted to make Gŵyl CADi Ha a smoke-free environment from the very outset and the decision certainly has not affected the popularity of the Festival, which is growing year on year. All posters outlining our no-smoking policy are now printed in Welsh, English and a suitable foreign language to reflect the international participation at this event.”