Pen Llŷn Ecomuseum (Ecoamgueddfa) at the Eisteddfod in Boduan
The School of History, Law and Social Sciences is the home of the Ecomuseum within Bangor University where Dr Einir Young and Gwenan Griffith work closely with Dr Kate Waddington, Dr Leona Huey, Dr Gary Robinson, Dr Karen Pollock and Professor Peter Shapely. The LIVE project received funding from the European Regional Development Fund through the Ireland Wales Cooperation Programme.
Aled Hughes was interviewed by Gwyn Jones, the Head of Oriel Plas Glyn y Weddw Gallery. As the three-year period of the LIVE project, which has funded the work of the Llŷn Ecomuseum over the past three years, has come to an end, it was great to be able to share the successes and the products of the project with the people of the area and with everyone who came to enjoy the buzz of the Ecomuseum stand. The aim of the Ecomuseum is to ensure that Pen Llŷn is respected as a home as well as a destination. You can find out more about the Ecomuseum on their websites: www.ecoamgueddfa.org and www.ecomuseumlive.eu.
There was an extremely full schedule with 21 events in total, but there is no space to mention all of them here. One of the highlights was being able to host two of the county's schools every morning to display the backdrops that were created for the 'Gair Mewn Gwlân' (‘Word in Wool’) project.
Many of the products of the Ecomuseum were shared – the leaflets for learning Welsh, Welsh in the Eisteddfod, six leaflets from the Wildlife Safaris, and there was a session by Rhys Mwyn and Dr Kate Waddington discussing the relics from Meillionnydd near Rhiw which were displayed throughout the week, and they also launched a Tre'r Ceiri virtual tour (ecomuseumlive.eu) – a resource available as a permanent exhibition at Porth y Swnt.
Many launches!
Three books and a series of vlogs were launched during the week at the Eisteddfod:
CipLŷn – a book which is the peak of the LIVE project
CipLŷn is a volume that achieves two goals, namely presenting the Llŷn Ecomuseum to the nation and giving 14 ‘girls’ (‘merchaid’) from Llŷn the opportunity to share their experiences and feelings about their own square mile through words and pictures. It contains a record of their feelings towards the place of their birth, towards the community and about their desires and concerns about the future, giving us a glimpse of their life from day to day. The response to the book has been very enthusiastic locally and from beyond Wales.
This is what Dr Jamie Davies from AHRC press had to say:
Gair mewn Gwlân / Word in Wool
'Project' is too vague a word to convey the true power of the work which was led by Chiefpoet Esyllt Maelor and which was recorded in this book through the funding of the Ecomuseum LIVE. 37 Gwynedd primary schools were able to put words and names on backdrops of squares that were knitted by people from around the world, but mainly from Gwynedd.
Esyllt comments: “There are the names of gates and pools, caves and rocks, farms and wells, fields, rivers, heaps and quarry points. Pupils from the project's schools chose the names and then proceeded with the help of school friends to embroider, sew and place them on the backdrops. There are hours of labour of love here. And I haven't mentioned the poems yet! They are here between the pages waiting for you to turn to them.”