Gower College Swansea held its annual Welsh Week last week, encouraging interaction and cultural engagement among students and staff. It featured a variety of activities celebrating Welsh culture and traditions.
TV personality Tudur Phillips led energetic clog dancing sessions, and students enthusiastically embraced the traditional Welsh dance, fostering a sense of cultural pride whilst also having a lot of fun!
On 12 June, our media students all had a special opportunity to work with a professional company called Carlam - which is part of the community of Yr Egin, Carmarthen - to create a live programme and then stream it live.
They worked as part of a group to carry out a task under specific time conditions developing research, production and camera work skills. They gained experience in planning, filming and editing promo content by considering the different elements of creating a programme.
As part of our aim to develop a bilingual workforce and train new staff to offer the Welsh language to our learners, this fantastic opportunity is available to you.
If you speak Welsh and are considering doing a PGCE qualification in order to qualify as a tutor or lecturer in the post-16 sector, there is a great opportunity for you to practice embedding the Welsh language in the classroom with bilingual groups. You will be eligible to apply for the bilingual teaching bursary worth £500 per year.
Gower College Swansea Business student Heledd Hunt is busy juggling her Level 3 studies with running her own company.
Heledd started her business – Hels Bakes Cakes - in September 2022, catering for events such as birthday parties. As a fluent Welsh speaker and one of the College’s Welsh Ambassadors, Heledd was also recently asked to cater for Welsh Week events across the campus, where 250 of her delicious cupcakes were on the menu.
We had a week full of events to celebrate Welshness in the college around St David’s Day, 1 March.
A coffee morning was held on each campus with delicious cupcakes made by one of our Level 3 Business learners, who has her own business on Instagram @helsbakescakes. Of course, there were plenty of free Welsh cakes for students as well!
Performances by Dafydd Mills from Menter Abertawe at Llwyn y Bryn and Jubilee Court and Ed Holden aka Mr Phormula Welsh rapper and beatboxer at Tycoch and Gorseinon.
Congratulations to the Housing team on winning the Pencampwr Cymraeg Assessor award in the Annual Apprenticeship Awards on the 6th February 2023.
A team of dedicated staff, totally committed to our mission as an organisation to embrace and develop the learners’ Welsh language skills at all levels. The team manager Lucy Bird is incredibly supportive and encouraging them to build on the bilingual ethos of the College.
Gower College Swansea’s campuses were full to the brim when it celebrated Welsh Language Music Day – a national day established to celebrate modern Welsh language music.
A joint project between the College, Menter Abertawe and Welsh Government meant a variety of Welsh artists Mellt, Mali Haf, Dafydd Mills, Mei Gwynedd and Parisa Fouladi took to our stages on the Tycoch, Gorseinon and Llwyn y Bryn campuses.
The aim of the day was to raise awareness amongst our students of the variety in Welsh music.
Last week (Monday 23rd January) the College celebrated the Welsh patron saint for love Santes Dwynwen’s day a little bit different. We decided to award positive, friendly and good news stories by asking staff and learners to nominate a person who has been friendly, loving and shown community spirit over the past year.
The 17th-century Welsh cultural celebration took place at our Llwyn y Bryn, Tycoch and Gorseinon campuses, as a flash-performance of the Mari Lwyd horse made its way through the sites.
Mari Lwyd (Y Fari Lwyd in Welsh meaning Old Grey Mare), is traditionally a New Year celebration to pass the marking of the dark days of winter and welcome the spring. Once celebrated across Wales, it’s now a tradition associated with south and south-east of the country.
AS and A Level Textiles students enjoyed a weaving workshop with Llio James, a Welsh practitioner with a strong interest in developing the relationship between hand weaving and the traditional woollen industry within Wales.
Exploring the feeling of belonging to ‘country and culture,’ colour plays an important role in her design process as she examines proportion, scale and geometric shapes when hand weaving bespoke cloth.