Digital Wales -- Entertainment and Social history

This is a listing of digital collections relating to Entertainment and Social history in Wales.

Entertainment

Wales on Air: Entertainment
Wales on Air gives visitors the opportunity to watch and listen to the best moments from the BBC Wales archive and contains online clips on a number of events and famous figures from Wales from the past 80 years. RealPlayer plug-in is required to play these clips. The resource also provides details of other archive material available to view by appointment at the BBC. The Entertainment section contains clips of many events:

English language clips include:
• Merthyr boxing coach Eddie Thomas (1930s, 1997)
• Gareth Edwards (1972,1973)
• End of Tiger Bay (1968)
• Singer and banjo player Tessa O'Shea (1978)
• Tom Jones and Max Boyce before the England v Wales rugby match at Wembley (1999)
• Manics Street Preachers before the Wales v Italy football match (2002)

Welsh language clips include:
• Dwylo Dros y Môr (Welsh charity song for Ethiopia, 1985)
• 5WA (Welsh language orchestra, 1923)
• Dafydd Edwards (1965)
• Gwynfor Evans (1966, 1974, 1982)
• Heddiw (the first Welsh language daily programme, 1961)
• Pobl y Cwm (1976)
• Noson Lawen with Bob Roberts, Tairfelin (1949)

Screenonline
Screenonline is a website devoted to the history of British film and television, and to Britain's social history as revealed by film and television. The project has been developed by the Britsh Film Institute and funded by a lottery New Opportunities Fund. The site features hundreds of hours of video clips from the vast collections of the bfi National Film and Television Archive, alongside thousands of stills, posters and press books and several hours of recorded interviews with film and television personalities. There are film clips of many rare footage and films from Wales supplied by the National Screen Archive of Wales. The website also provides a biography of the following Welsh actors: Richard Burton (1925-1984), Timothy Dalton (1946-), Endaf Emlyn (1944-), Karl Francis (1942- ), Peter Greenway (1942-), Hugh Griffith (1912-1980), Kenneth Griffith (1921-), Anthony Hopkins (1937-), Rhys Ifans (1966-), Terry Jones (1942-), Roger Livesey (1901-1976) Ivor Novello (1893-1951), Alun Owen (1925-1994), Jonathan Pryce (1947-), Rachel Roberts (1927-1980) and Arthur Watkins (1907-1965).

Sport

Wales on Air: Sport
Sporting Clips from Wales on Air include:

• Gary Sobers' six sixes at St Helens (1968)
• Cardiff City cup final victory (1927)
• Welsh rugby's fourth triple crown in a row(1979)
• Boxer Howard Winstone

Gathering the Jewels: Sport and Leisure
This section of Gathering the Jewels has a sport and leisure theme. Items include:

• Football including Dorrien's cartoons of famous footballers, football teams and programmes
• Rugby including Dorrien's cartoons of famous rugby players and Cardiff Arms Park and its demolition in 1997

Gentle Giant Trust
The Gentle Giant Trust has been working since early 2002 to create and extensively tour a major celebration of the life and times of the footballer John Charles, who died in February 2004. This website provides much information about the exhibition and the trust, as well as about John Charles himself and his footballing career. Full contact details for the trust are also provided.

Welsh Wizards Exhibition
This is the web site of 'The Welsh Wizards – Wales' Soccer Stars' exhibition which was based in Wrexham. With Wales out of the 2002 World Cup, the exhibition was a chance to see how well Wales has performed in the past, find out who these football 'greats' are, as well as see memorabilia that once belonged to the players. The site posts some of Welsh football's history and describes some of the nations greatest players over the years.

This section contains a variety of sources relating to Social history in Wales.

Coal and Slate Industry

Cwm: Coalfield Web Materials
The CWM (Coalfield Web Materials) project covers the south Wales coal mining industry and digitises photographic and oral history (audio, video) material contained within the University of Wales' South Wales Coalfield Collection. The project covers a wide range of themes including events such as the many miners' strike in Wales, life in the coalfield (focusing on economy, society, religion and politics) and a short biography of people such as Aneurin Bevan, SO Davies and Keir Hardie. The website also has a search facility, guide on how to use the site and learning paths for use in education.

Slatesite
Slatesite provides digitised information and a range of learning materials on the North Wales Slate Industry and its associated communities. The project is a co-operative venture and contains details of quarrying techniques, quarrying history, pay strikes and living conditions, transport infrastructure and the effect the slate industry had on community life in north Wales.

Local Communities

Getting in on the Act!
Getting in on the Act features digitised material provided by numerous organisations such as museums, archives, libraries, community and voluntary organisations and records aspects of community life such as leisure and sport, events, local history and culture. Over 2,500 items have been digitised and the project is funded by New Opportunities Fund and based at the Department of Information Studies, University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Communities Cymru
Communities Cymru is a Culturenet Cymru project enabling community groups to create stimulating digital content from local projects. The first of these projects is 'The Llandrindod Wells Portraits' which is created in collaboration with Radnorshire Museum and the Radnorshire Branch of the Powys Family History Society. The project has digitised 2000 glass negatives, of which only 10% of the portrait photographs could be positively identified - as a result, residents of Powys are invited to visit the site in order to provide names and information about these photographs.

Rural life and Agriculture

Life on the Land
This is the website that conincides with the Life on the Land exhibition that was held at the National Library of Wales between 4th May-9th October 2004. The site includes much information and history about agriculture and farming in Wales. The site has 17 themes: A century of transformation, Agricultural Societies, Land ownership, Landowner, Enclosing common land, Cultivating the land, Agricultural implements and machinery, Markets and farms, The drover, Cattle, Sheep, Other animals on the farm, Life on the farm, The farmer, Farm servants, The tithe and Milk produce.

Voices of Agriculture
The Voices of Agriculture project is one which is committed to creating a databank of oral and pictorial information on the changes and influences which have affected agriculture since 1947. The project aims to record specific personal experiences and help give voice to the people whose daily lives may not normally attract attention, but whose contribution to the way our society and land has evolved may have been profound, both individually, and as a group or community.

Life in the Victorian Age

Powys in Victorian Times
Resources for schools explaining how community life changed in mid Wales during the long reign of Queen Victoria. Historical information is provided on the principal towns including population graphs, photographs, maps, notable events and developments as well as notes on the change in lifestyle during the period. Sections providing information about the communities in the following towns during Victorian times are included: Brecon, Llanwrtyd Wells, Builth Wells, Machynlleth, Crickhowell, Montgomery, Hay-on-Wye, Newtown, Knighton, Presteigne, Llandrindod Wells, Rhayader, Llanfair Caereinion, Talgarth, Llanfyllin, Welshpool, Llanidloes and Ystradgynlais.

Hidden Lives
Hidden Lives is a Big Lottery Fund project developed for those interested in British social history. It explores the history of children who were in the care of The Children's Society in late Victorian and early 20th Century Britain. At the time they were one of the poorest and most unprivileged sections of British society. The website provides case files of children in the care of the Society from Victorian and Edwardian times. There are many refernces to Wales including history of children's homes such as Edward Nicholl Home For Babies (Llandaff), St Deniol's Home For Boys (Arthog), Mumbles Home For Girls (Swansea), St David's Home For Boys (Dolgellau), St Cadoc's Home For Girls (Caerleon), St Garmon's Home For Boys (Betws Garmon) and St Giles' Home For Boys (Wrexham). There are also many photographs portraying life during this period. The website also contains learning material for schools.

Ruthin Gaol
This is the website of Ruthin Gaol in Denbighshire, which is a by now a museum and county record office. The website contains comprehensive information about the gaol and it's history and displays a number of archives and historical pictures.

Other subject specific projects include:

Work and Play
Work and Play was an exhibition held at the National Library of Wales. The exhibition is a snapshot into the everyday life of people in Wales, from art collections held at National Library of Wales and Carmarthen Museum. The work theme includes working with heavy metals, and coal mining. The leisure pictures include 'images of play, sport and enjoying the outdoors in picnics and the seaside'. The Play pictures concentrate on the more serious subjects of worship, poem-making and protesting. The exhibition was the result of co-operation between the National Library of Wales and Oriel Myrddin.

The Promised Land?
The exhibition The Promised Land? was held at the National Library of Wales between 17th January-26th June 2004, and looked at the emigration seen between Wales and North America, and the practice of sending British convicts to Australia. This website was created to coincide with the exhibition. It includes history and information about emigration between Wales and North America, Patagonia, Europe and Australia.

Celtic Voices
These pages contain an exhibition to give the visitor a sense of the variety of the National Library's collections to do with the Celtic Languages. The website contains examples of items under ten different themes to do with the Celtic languages. It has themes and digitised items relating to Edward Lluyd, Sir John Rhys, the Mabinogion, music, drama, costume and the eisteddfod tradition.

Tales of Welsh Tradition Bearers
The Welsh language has a long and rich tradition of writing prose and poetry. Many of these tales and folk traditions have been transmitted orally in unbroken succession from the earliest period to the present day. The tradition of telling stories remained very much alive in Wales. The Tales of Welsh Tradition Bearers presents a selection of folk narratives from the extensive collections in the Sound Archive of the Museum of Welsh Life, narratives told by men and women from various parts of Wales. A wide range of folk tales are represented in order to help document the nature of the oral storytelling tradition in Wales in the second half of the twentieth century. Sound recordings of the storytellers telling their tales have been included on the website. Featured storytellers come from many areas of Wales including Ceredigion, Meirionethshire, Caernarfonshire, Anglesey, Glamorganshire and Denbighshire. The resource is part of the National Museum and Galleries of Wales site.