Happy St David's Day from Cwlwm – Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus o Cwlwm
Our monthly briefing, connecting communities across Cymru – news, stories and recommendations
Dear friends
Welcome to the second edition of Briffio, our monthly email rounding up recent stories, previewing what we have in the pipeline, and sharing a selection of things to look forward to over the next 31 days. Click here for a comprehensive list of events happening today across the country to mark St David’s Day, and scroll down for our own handpicked selection of cultural highlights – it’s going to be quite a month.
We won’t be turning on paid subscriptions just yet, but every reader who pledges support shows us how Cwlwm is valued, and indicates how sustainable we might become – and therefore how possible it might be for the magazine to build for the future. It’s just £5 per month – a posh bag of chips in Cardiff or an ice cream on Anglesey. If you’re enjoying what we’re doing, please consider pledging a paid subscription for the future.
In our first two months, true to our vision, we have published stories from right across Wales, and are pleased that our top three most-read stories so far have come from the north, the south and the middle of the country:
Tina Rogers on the character of Chirk, a former mining village on the border
Dylan Moore on how Newport’s communities resist austerity through creativity
James Bessant Davies on a special Christmas event that brought Brecon together
We are also really proud to have published stories about people who have made a home in Wales after arriving from elsewhere – from Chile in the 1970s and from Iran, Turkey and Ukraine more recently – as well as those from Wales who now live abroad. As we wrote on Valentine’s Day, we stand together with refugees.
Cwlwm’s ethos is to explore what connects us, both within our local communities and across borders. This month we’ll be publishing stories about a mining disaster in Clydach Vale and a disused railway junction in south Powys, exploring music from Butetown to Bottwnog – and from Llandudno to Langland Bay we’ll be bringing you personal reflections from around Wales’ coastline. We’ll also be at the Laugharne Weekend, still possibly – and somewhat unbelievably – the country’s best kept secret, as well as the football – we’re still here hoping Cymru qualify for the Euros in June.
Mewn // In
We don’t only recommend reading Cwlwm, however. We’d like this to be a place where people discover the best of what Wales has to offer – and that includes a glut of great books coming out this month from Welsh publishers.
In poetry, we’re looking forward to Taz Rahman’s debut collection East of the Sun, West of the Moon (Seren), while to mark International Women’s Day, Parthian will publish Woman’s Wales? – a collection edited by Emma Schofield exploring what devolution has meant for women in Wales. The book promises contributions from a range of great writers including Cwlwm contributor Jasmine Donahaye, and Sophie Buchaillard – who also has a novel out this month, Assimilation from Honno.
Ambassador of Nowhere, the new book by Richard Gwyn, promises a Latin American odyssey and a meditation on the relationship between translation and travel, how the places we visit form part of who we are. Closer to home, writer and ecologist Carwyn Graves takes us on a tour of seven key elements of the Welsh landscape and Euron Griffith revisits A Casual Life in six t-shirts. If this memoir of ‘disastrous first gigs [and] major record deals, from North Wales to the smoky clubs of Soho’ inspires, there’s also the good news that from 4 March, Radio Cymru 2 will be playing music throughout the day.
Allan // Out
You might have noticed that we’re partial to peppering pieces with placenames, especially if they alliterate and demonstrate the breadth of our reach across Wales. Imagine how pleased we are then to plug live music this month from Caldicot to Caernarfon! The Bug Club, who hail from the former, will open Newport’s new Corn Exchange venue with a gig on 2 March, while Cowbois Rhos Botwnnog tour their sixth album, including a show at Galeri in the latter on 8 March.
The Wales One World film festival returns in cinemas this month, 11–31 March, with stops in Bangor, Swansea, Cardigan, and Aberystwyth. The festival features independent storytelling from Bangladesh to Nigeria and from Iran to Colombia. Cwlwm particularly recommends a special evening at Small World Theatre in Cardigan on 8 March, where a screening of the powerful documentary Gaza (2019) will be followed by discussion. All proceeds go towards delivering vital aid to Gazans affected by the war through Red Cross/Red Crescent.
O Gwmpas // Around
Other pan-Wales cultural tours you may be interested in catching at your local venue this month include National Theatre Wales’ latest show, Bethan Marlow’s Feral Monster – which has dates in Aberystwyth, Bangor, Llanelli and Brecon – and the 25th anniversary tour of the 1990s cult film Twin Town, in cinemas nationwide.
Meanwhile, Aberystwyth Arts Centre hosts a great range of events, including a screening of Cuban Women in the Revolution – and the brilliant N’Famady Koyate live on the same night! The Gypsy Makers Exhibition Tour continues at Ty Pawb in Wrexham – March is the last chance to catch it in the north before it returns to Cardiff and then Newport, whilst over at the brand new Ffin-y-Parc Gallery in Llandudno an opening exhibition offers the chance to see a major solo exhibition of Sarah Carvell’s paintings of landscapes across the north of Wales to mark the artist’s sixtieth birthday.
Down south, several excellent exhibitions are promised at the Pierhead in Cardiff Bay. Tiger Bay and the Docks: 1880-1950 is a collaboration between the Senedd and The Heritage & Cultural Exchange, a community organisation that aims to chronicle the heritage and cultural diversity of Tiger Bay and Cardiff Docklands and bring it to the world. Meanwhile Newport Community Champions is the third instalment of Kamila Jarczak’s brilliant Women of Newport series, while City of Portraits is Grahame Hurd-Wood’s ambitious project to paint a portrait of every resident in St Davids, providing a unique insight into Britain’s smallest city. A new exhibition has its opening night at the Workers Gallery, Ynyshir on 7 March exploring how people in the south Wales valleys think about independence; the exhibition only runs until 23 March, so be quick! We enjoyed Michal Iwanowski’s Instagram project ‘Go Home Polish’, a clever and powerful work which explores the idea of home through a journey across Europe. Go see it in National Museum Cardiff and take the opportunity to view Art 100 as well, an exhibition of 100 objects from the museum’s collections that arises from engaging with the public on Instagram to explore new attitudes to well-known works.
And finally…
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Cofion cynnes,
Dylan Moore – dylan@cwlwm.org | Merlin Gable – merlin@cwlwm.org