There will be tunics and flowing cloaks, to say nothing of ancient chants, when the archdruid of the Gorsedd of Bards officiates at the annual “chairing of the bard” ceremony in August.

But the crowds who gather by the River Conwy in the Welsh market town of Llanrwst will not be paid “extras” for a fictional scene of boxset-worthy wizardry. These will be real fans of poetry, art and music – about 150,000 of them, if previous turnouts are a guide – gathering for the National Eisteddfod, a ritual celebration that is still regarded as central to the cultural life of Wales.

This year the Welsh language arts festival, which has historically focused on poetry and song, will be spotlighting Welsh visual artists as never before. For the first time two major symbolic prizes, the bardic chair and crown, commissioned each year, have both been designed and made by women. And in the foothills of Snowdonia, the Parisian artist Sebastien Preshoux has installed a powerful red “pop-up” sculpture, which flows through the landscape to mark the arrival of the Eisteddfod, which visits a different place in Wales each year.

Art dealer Ralph Sanders, who runs the Ffin y Parc gallery in Llanwrst, which will be exhibiting the new chair and crown, is determined to use the festival to fight back against a succession of gallery closures across Wales.

“When I heard that the Eisteddfod was coming to Llanwrst this year I thought, well, we’re going to be right here at the epicentre of Welsh culture and artistic endeavour,” he said. “So I want to show people exactly what is going on, in spite of all the closures of other galleries, and how Welsh art is actually thriving.

“This gallery is lucky enough to play host to some of the richest and most diverse artwork that would make London galleries drool.”

This year’s bardic chair, designed by Gwenan Jones, is one the major prizes at the Eisteddfod.

Last year Swansea’s renowned Attic Gallery, established 30 years ago, was saved on the brink of closure. But other venues, including the Nick Holly Studio Gallery and Swansea University’s former long-running Ceri Richards Gallery, have not been so lucky.

Across Wales a series of other small galleries have also closed or are facing a tough market. Most notably the Tegfryn Gallery on Anglesey, one of Wales’s oldest and most respected galleries, was forced to shut its doors. A drastic fall in participation in a scheme designed to boost art sales is partly to blame. The Collectorplan free loan initiative had been sent up by the Arts Council of Wales to encourage the purchase of Welsh work.

The National Eisteddfod, which dates back as far as 1176 and takes its name from the Welsh for a gathering or meeting point, is regarded as a highlight of the Welsh calendar, often launching the careers of young artists, musicians and writers.

This year, to highlight the talent of Welsh visual artists, the traditional bardic chair, on which the winning creator of “cynghanedd”, a key rhythmic and alliterative form of Welsh language poetry, will sit on 9 August, has been designed by Gwenan Jones from nearby Maerdy.

In addition, the crown that will be placed upon the head of the poet who is deemed to have written the best non-harmonic poetry has been designed by Angela Evans, a young jeweller from Caernarfon. Both crown and chair were made incorporating copper from the Great Orme copper mines in Llandudno and a 2cm cube of pure copper was presented to Eisteddfod officials for use in their construction.

“It has been an honour to design and create this chair, especially with the festival being held locally,” said Jones. “The River Conwy and the county’s industries have inspired the design. The river is the backbone of the county, flowing from its source at Llyn Conwy on the Migneint mountain to the estuary in Conwy, and it is seen running down the two shepherd’s sticks that form the side of the chair.”

Evans’s crown will be presented four days earlier for the best sequence of poems composed on the subject of inlets (cilfachau). The crowning ceremony takes place on Monday 5 August, and the chairing ceremony on Friday 9 August.