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07.02.2020

Welsh gig, concert and festival posters tell us a great deal about the history of Welsh culture and the Welsh Music Scene throughout the decades.

As Welsh Language Music Day celebrates its fifth birthday on 7 February 2020, The National Library of Wales is launching its #poster2020 campaign. As part of the initiative, we are appealing to institutions, organizers and collectors for their assistance in creating a comprehensive national collection of posters.

The #poster2020 campaign will be led by The Welsh Music Archive, which collects and promotes the use of musical archives and manuscripts at The Library. The development of a comprehensive collection of posters is also intended to enhance the aims of the Screen and Sound Archive at The Library, and will offer an interesting angle and context to Welsh sound and music items.

Among the most prominent poster collection currently held at The Library is that of Gwilym Tudur. It includes an extensive series of over 120 posters, which are political in nature and promote historic Welsh gigs and concerts. Visitors to the Library may have browsed a selection of these in our recent exhibition - Record: Folk, Protest and Pop, which will be touring our gallery at The Riverside, Haverfordwest in the future.

Nia Mai Daniel, Programme Manager of the Welsh Music Archive, The National Library of Wales, said:

“The Welsh Music Archive contains information on many genres of Welsh music, from classical to folk and pop. We continue to build on our collections and try to identify gaps as we collect, which inspired our #poster2020 campaign. If you are organizing a gig, concert or festival in 2020, send your poster to the Welsh Music Archive, in paper or electronic form, and contribute to our national collections at The Library.”

Mari Elin Jones, Interpretation Officer at The National Library of Wales, said:

“We have a fairly comprehensive set of posters dating from the 60s to the 80s at The National Library. However, there are significant gaps in our contemporary collections, particularly from the 90s onwards. This may be explained by the decline in the quality and appearance of posters; however, today they are again increasingly regarded as an artistic expression which has naturally attracted the attention of keen collectors.”

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Further information (press enquiries):
Elen Haf Jones
post@llgc.org.uk
01970 632 534


Further information (contributing posters):
Nia Mai Daniel
nia.daniel@llyfrgell.cymru
01970 632 878