Culturenet Cymru’s travels unearth treasures

 

The Culturenet team have recently completed a series of roadshows across south Wales collecting a wealth of items for the Sports and Pastimes theme. 

We were welcomed by Swansea RFC, Newport Cricket Club, Pontarddulais Male Voice Choir and Pembrokeshire YFC and they were all keen to share their memories and stories with us.

We began at St Helen’s with a day of memories with former players, committee men and lifelong Swansea RFC supporters sharing their stories of the club.  Former players regaled staff with reminiscences from their days at St Helen’s including changes to the club and the ground over the years, and the impact of professionalism on the game.  Lifelong supporters and former players David Price and Vivian Davies shared memories of the controversial Springbok tour of 1969 and Byron Mugford told the story of the Anglo-Welsh ‘Rebel League’ in the 1995-96 season.

The tour then stopped at Newport Cricket Club for a day to celebrate the club’s 175^th anniversary.  A busy day saw memorabilia of all kinds, from scorecards and photographs to the autographs of legends such as Wally Hammond, Emrys Davies and Australian cricketer Shane Warne when he played against Newport in his youth.  Former players and members of the club had searched their attics and brought along a wealth of material to tell the story of the club’s long history.  Working with Glamorgan Cricket Club and Glamorgan University’s digital storytelling project Tale-Enders, Culturenet digitised a wealth of material which will be preserved online for the club’s next 175 years!

Côr Meibion Pontarddulais were our next participants and their members brought an excellent collection of material telling the history of the choir since its formation in 1960.  Photographs of their concerts, tours abroad, Eisteddfod victories and even some of their celebrity friends painted a picture of the choir’s success over the past half a century.

To round things off, we visited Pembrokeshire for a busy day to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Young Farmers’ Club in the county.  Past and present members came together to share stories of their time with the YFC and to compare notes on how the movement had developed over the decades.  A fascinating day was had by all and the excellent attendance certainly kept Culturenet staff on their toes.

All the material collected over these four days will soon appear on the Community Archives Wales website.  To find out when, why not sign up to the Gathering the Jewels RSS feed which will give you the latest news about all our projects.
Simply click the orange symbol in your web browser to subscribe.

---