LEAF BOAT: The sculpture is back in the water, and the artist who made it has seen it home

The Leaf Boat is standing in water again, and the woman who made it has been to see it.

Amber Hiscott was reunited with her sculpture at Cwmdonkin Park as it was unveiled in its new home, thirty years after she designed it for a very different setting in the middle of Swansea.

“The shining Leaf Boat sails on,” she said.

She added that it was “lovely to see the sculpture once again, freshly cleaned, and now in the park where Dylan roamed as a child”.

A missing panel, thirty years on

The sculpture is not quite whole. One of its original glass elements is missing, and a temporary panel has been fitted while the council works with Hiscott on a replacement.

“I loved working on the sculpture all those years ago and I’m pleased to have the opportunity to create the missing piece some thirty years on, so the artwork can be fully restored for a new generation of park visitors to enjoy,” she said.

The relocation and the new panel are being paid for by a grant from the UK Government’s Shared Prosperity Fund.

The pond it now sits in was found to be leaking. It has since been repaired, refreshed and refilled, and the council says the work has created a setting that complements the sculpture.

Cllr Elliott King, the council’s cabinet member for culture, said the move felt like a return rather than a relocation.

“In many ways it feels like a homecoming,” he said. “The sculpture was inspired by Dylan Thomas’s poetry and now sits in a park that featured so prominently in his childhood and writing.”

He added that councils often have to decommission or dispose of public art when developments change around it. “We’re delighted that residents, visitors and Dylan enthusiasts from around the world will be able to enjoy it in such an attractive setting,” he said.

The poem behind it

The sculpture has always been more specific than most people realise. It began with three lines of a single Dylan Thomas poem, Rain Cuts the Place We Tread.

“We sail a boat upon the path, and paddle with leaves, down an ecstatic line of light,” Hiscott said, quoting them. “I envisioned him playing as a kid, making a boat out of a leaf, setting it on water, and imagining it floating out to sea.”

The same lines appeared in Welsh and English on the plaque beside the old Castle Square pool. That plaque records something else too. It says the sculpture was designed and made by Hiscott “with David Pearl”, the Swansea glass artist she has worked alongside since the 1980s on projects including the Glass Towers and Razor Shells in Cardiff Bay. Pearl joined her at the park for the unveiling.

The plaque also names the people who paid for it: British Telecommunications, Alberto Culver and the South Wales Evening Post, under a scheme pairing business money with public art.

The Leaf Boat was unveiled in Castle Square on 27 November 1996 by the then Lord Mayor of Swansea, Cllr Desmond Thomas, after Hiscott won a council competition to design an artwork for the square.

“After being the centrepiece at Castle Gardens and a talking point there for so many years, it is good to see the sculpture in its new home, ready to welcome future generations to Cwmdonkin Park,” Hiscott said.

From the square to the park

The journey to the park has taken most of a year. The sculpture was craned out of Castle Square in January along with the old fountain, and a resident’s photograph of the empty site was the first many people saw of its departure.

At that point the council would say only that it had been “carefully removed and stored” and would get a new home somewhere in Swansea, with the artist consulted as options were explored. The park was confirmed in July and installation began at the start of September.

It was built by DAR Design, the same firm that took it down in January.

Thomas was born at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, directly overlooking the park, and lived there for 23 years. The park became the setting for The Hunchback in the Park. The council says it has invested in the park over the years alongside the Friends of Cwmdonkin Park, including interpretation boards and refurbished tennis courts near the cafe.

The argument over the cost

The move has not been without argument. Cllr Peter May, who represents Uplands and leads the Uplands Party, raised the cost at a scrutiny committee in April, asking whether the money would be better spent on toilets at Victoria Park.

He said he welcomed the sculpture’s “fitting location” given the Dylan Thomas links, but had challenged what he understood to be a £40,000 bill, arguing the need at Victoria Park was acute after investment in its basketball and tennis courts and the opening of its £3m skate plaza. The council later said the move cost £19,000, and that the higher figure was an initial estimate. Cllr May was among those at the park for the unveiling.

Back in the city centre, the square the Leaf Boat left is due to reopen in the second half of 2027 as Castle Square Gardens, with two cafe pavilions, a play fountain and a big screen.