Communiuties of Wales

The learners of Cathays High have designed a mural to represent their community. UNIFY, artists who have created several famous murals in Cardiff delivered 6 workshops with Year 7 learners in art lessons. The workshops included:

• Visiting street murals in Cardiff.
• Researching The Wales Window, Alabama by John Petts and its history.
• Designing a mural that celebrates diversity in the community and showcases how art can bring people together. 

Sketty Primary School learners investigated the 'Battle of Swansea', 1969, apartheid in South Africa, Nelson Mandela and the Anti-Apartheid movement in Wales. Investigating a local incident led to providing context to an international subject. The learners were given opportunities to:

• Browse Peter Hain's archive about the anti-apartheid protests.
• Ricardo Erasmus also visited the school to share his experience of living in South Africa and the meaning of the word Ubuntu.
• Create anti-apartheid/Ubuntu posters with a local artist Sarah Hopkins based on Paul Peter Piech's 'Racism is a Poison' poster. 
• Listen to Peter Hain explaining his role in the anti-apartheid movement when he visited the school.

Ysgol Hamadryad wanted to learn more about the experiences of Black miners from Wales and the connection between Paul Robeson and the miners. The learners had the opportunity to:

• Learn more about Black miners in Wales with the author and historian Rebecca Eversley-Dawes, who came to deliver a primary and secondary source research workshop. 
• Research the connection between Paul Robeson and the miners. They watched a clip from the film ‘Proud Valley’.
• Participate in a poetry workshop with Alex Wharton, Children's Laureate Wales, where they listened to Alex Wharton’s poem ‘Diolch Mr Robeson’ and created couplets about the Black miners from Wales. 
• Create commemorative plates for the Black miners with the artist Lowri Davies. The couplets they created in the workshop with Alex Wharton were included on the plates.

The aim of the project was to learn and understand more about religions in their area of ​​Cardiff. The Cardiff Commitment contacted the Library to ask if we could support this project with our archives. The project included:

• An emphasises on how to live together and coexist in a community that has various religions. 
• Creating a documentary film on this theme using clips from the Wales Broadcast Archive to enrich their film. 
• The Library organised for filmmaker Mo Jannah to go to the school to deliver a film-making workshop and inspire the class.
• Related to the project, an Iftar was held at the school during Ramadan for the Muslim community. Families and relatives gathered to pray and break the fast on the school grounds. 
• The learners researched Ramadan to prepare for the Iftar.

The North Wales Africa Society wanted to learn more about storytelling during their summer workshops for families. Around 50 individuals from the North Wales Africa Society came by bus from Bangor to the Library. The visit included:

• Storytelling workshops with storytellers Phil Okwedy and Peter Stevenson, who told the story of Henry Box Brown. Henry was enslaved in the USA but escaped to Britain and travelled around Wales telling his story in the 1850s and 1860s. 
• Phil and Peter told stories using 'crankies'. A 'crankie' is a large open wooden box like a picture frame containing a long scroll that turns with a handle on top. It is widely believed that Henry Box Brown was the first person to bring this form of storytelling to Wales. 
• A chance to see the newspaper reports that record Henry Box Brown's visits to Wales. 
• The opportunity to make their own little crankies with Peter and Phil in a workshop following the storytelling session.

The aim of the project was to work with community groups to co-create learning resources about migration into Wales. We contacted 4 community groups:

• KIRAN Cymru
• The Jewish History Association of South Wales
• Tiger Bay and the World
• Arandora Star Memorial Fund 

Items from the Library's collection alongside items supplied by the community groups were used to tell stories of migration into Wales. The packs will be tested with Ysgol Bro Pedr, Lampeter.