We hope that the website’s new features, the new geographical searching facility (GIS) in particular, have made access to the historical and cultural treasures of Wales easier than ever.  There are now over 30,000 images on the websites from every corner of Wales.

In the same way as Gathering the Jewels has evolved over the past year, the provision of digital content in Wales has also developed.  At the moment, Gathering the Jewels staff are working towards a new Welsh Assembly Government project called The People’s Collection.  The People’s Collection will be an interactive, digital, bilingual resource celebrating the culture and heritage of Wales, enabling users to become a part of their local history and community.

A number of images from Gathering the Jewels will appear on this new website, as well as content uploaded by users.  It is hoped that the images of museums, libraries and archives will appear alongside those contributed by individuals, students, community groups and other interested parties. 

Keep an eye on the Gathering the Jewels website for the latest content and developments.

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.

By clicking on the orange icon which appears in your address bar, you can keep up-to-date with the latest news from the GTJ project - from new collections added to the site, to the latest news from the Gathering the Jewels office.

Over the coming months, GTJ will be adding hundreds of new items to the Sports and Pastimes in Wales theme.  Our Project Officers have been digitising the collections of the Welsh Rugby Union, the Welsh Sports Hall of Fame and Glamorgan Cricket Club, to name but a few, and these will all be online soon.

So, if you would like to be the first to know when these exciting new collections are added to the site, add the GTJ newsfeed to your toolbar!

The purpose of the Talking Hands Award is to reward website authors who, ‘through their creative excellence provide a web site which teaches, contains teaching elements in sufficient, and otherwise leaves a visitor with something of significant value after returning to their normal daily activities, which will enable them to be better citizens of the world.’

The Gathering the Jewels team is very pleased to receive this award, and it is their hope that visitors to the site leave feeling that they have learnt about the heritage and culture of Wales. With over 30,000 images on the site Gathering the Jewels provides a doorway to exploring the jewels hidden in the country's museums, archives and libraries.

Since the relaunch of the Gathering the Jewels website in August 2008 it has been constantly developing.  The team has been working to digitise yet more content and will shortly be publishing images from collections such as the Welsh Rugby Union, the Welsh Sports Hall of Fame, the National Cycle Collection at Llandrindod Wells and Glamorgan County Cricket Club.

The new content will be appearing on the website soon.

http://www.gtj.org.uk/

The Welsh public voted previous winners Nicole Cook and boxer Joe Calzaghe in second and third place.  Other winners at the annual event included the Cardiff City Football Club  and snooker legend Ray Reardon who won the lifetime achievement award. 

Gathering the Jewels has its own collection of sporting personalities, including many former winners of the award, thanks to the colourful work of the cartoonist Dorrien.  Dozens of Welsh sporting heroes have been caricatured by the talented cartoonist who drew largely for the Wales on Sunday newspaper.

Shane Williams follows in the footsteps of other Welsh rugby greats such as Gareth Edwards, Phil Bennett and Bryn Meredith in winning the award.  The event celebrated a special year for Williams in which he helped secure the Six Nations Grand Slam for Wales and won international rugby's greatest personal accolade to become the International Rugby Board's World Player of the Year.

Cardiff City FC, winners of the Team of the Year award, had hoped to emulate the success of the famous 1927 side in winning the FA Cup, reaching the final for the first time in 80 years and for the third time in the club’s history.  Though the game ended in a 1-0 defeat to Portsmouth, it was a great achievement for the capital city side.  Gathering the Jewels has a collection of photographs from the 1927 FA Cup final.  To view them, click here.

Ray Reardon, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award, was born in Tredegar and won six World Snooker Championships during the 1970s.  When world rankings were introduced in 1976, Reardon was the first number one, retaining the title until 1981/2.  He was presented with the award by his compatriot and frequent opponent, Terry Griffiths.

Many of the sporting greats mentioned here have been caricatured by Dorrien in his unique style and his collections such as ‘World Cup Heroes’ and ‘Welsh Lions Rugby Greats’ have captured dozens of Wales’ best-loved sportsmen and women.  Why not take a look at his work on the Gathering the Jewels site? 

Situated in an old farmhouse just outside the town of Llangeler in Carmarthenshire, a trip to The West Wales Museum of Childhood is like a stroll down memory lane with over a hundred years of children’s playtimes exhibited. And now, you can get a taste of the Museum’s collection here on Gathering the Jewels .

Gathering the Jewels has a selection of items from the museum which reflect how toys and playtime have changed over the generations. From the simplest of wooden dolls from the early nineteenth century, to the figures inspired by cult television series such as Dr Who, Batman and The Avengers, the collection shows how popular culture and consumerism have influenced children’s toy-boxes.

While there are many uniquely Welsh items in the collection such as the Eisteddfod purses and ribbons which generations of children would have competed for in their local schools and chapels, toys made in Wales were also exported worldwide. The famous die-cast models of Corgi Toys were produced by Mettoy in Swansea and found homes around the globe. Some of the most famous were cars and figures made famous by film and television such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Batmobile, The Avengers car and James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5, the largest selling toy car ever produced. Another toy manufacturer with a Welsh connection was Louis Marx & Co. The large American company manufactured toys in Swansea during the 1960s and 1970s and produced items such as the Daleks seen in this collection.

To view the items, click here

The Welsh Rugby Union, the Welsh Sports Hall of Fame and the National Cycle Collection are a few of the organisations that will be contributing to the project.

The National Cycle Collection, located in the mid-Wales town of Llandrindod Wells, holds an array of items documenting the history of cycling and motorcycling in Wales, Britain, and across the world.  There are hundreds of bicycles ranging from early nineteenth century Penny Farthings and ‘Bone-shakers’ to the latest racing and track bikes.  In addition, there are hundreds of images and programmes for trials and races held in Wales and Britain; it is the most comprehensive collection of its nature in the country.  It will surely not be long before items relating to Nicole Cooke find their way to this valuable collection!

Over the coming weeks and months our project officers will be working to digitise yet more material relating to sport and leisure in Wales and are keen to include as many sports as possible from across Wales.  If you are a private collector or part of a team or organisation that would like to contribute please get in touch with us at Culturenet Cymru.

The team shared The National Library of Wales's stand which welcomed hundreds of visitors during the week. 

Staff answered visitors' questions about our various projects and told them about the latest developments within Culturenet. Visitors were able to see our projects at work with the new Gathering the Jewels website and MYGLYW digital stories on display. 

Various notable figures in Welsh culture visited the stand to perform for passers-by and kindly brought in material to be scanned by our staff. Among those who contributed were the Welsh singer-songwriter, Heather Jones who brought along some photographs of her and her band members in the 1970s. The Welsh Children's Poet, Ifor ap Glyn also visited and spoke to Andrew Green about items from his family's history including a Sunday School report from his grandfather's childhood.
These images will be available to view online soon.

Thursday was the big day for Culturenet with the launch of the new Gathering the Jewels website. Alun Ffred Jones and Dafydd Wigley launched the new website which signals a new phase in development not only for Culturenet but the whole of the heritage industry in Wales. Launching the website the Minister said, 

"I am pleased to see such exciting developments which put more of our nation's history on the web. Ensuring that the people of Wales are aware of their heritage is important to our national identity."

Users are now able to search using the latest Geographical Information System (GIS) which allows you to find your hometown on the map and see which treasures relate to it on the website. This makes it even easier to see the range and variety of images from across Wales that are collected on Gathering the Jewels.

Another feature of the new site is a 'Sport and Leisure' theme which is a comprehensive overview of the favourite pastimes of the Welsh, from rugby and football to folk music and the Eisteddfod.

Over the coming months the team will be working on developing three other themes - on women's history, the history of industry and the experiences of ethnic minorities in Wales. It is hoped that these will help provide a more complete picture of life in Wales.

We are keen for you to contribute! If you have any images relating to the 'Sport and Leisure' theme we would be delighted if you would share them with us on the image sharing website Flickr. 

At the Eisteddfod in Cardiff (2-10 August) Culturenet Cymru would like to invite you to share your memories and experiences. Come and visit us at The National Library of Wales’s stand with items from your history and have them scanned and preserved digitally.

Wales has a rich cultural history and where better to celebrate it than at the country’s premier cultural event? If you have a memory or story to tell, come over to our stand for a unique opportunity to share your past. During the week individuals such as Dafydd Wigley, Heather Jones, Alun Ffred Jones, Ali Yassine and others will be bringing their treasures to share with us so why not join them?

Not only will we be scanning and digitising photographs, letters, posters, tickets and books, we will also be recording your words, so if you’d like to tell us your memories of Cardiff or the Eisteddfod, come and have your say!