Unedig

Our project Unedig was based in Merthyr Tydfil and sought to celebrate the rich musical diversity in the town. We aimed to create a music project bringing cultural influences together and use music as a method to celebrate one another's work. We primarily worked with the Portuguese café in Pont Morlais called Portugalles who had some experience of putting on activities for their community and had a vibrant clientele and regular attenders. We also engaged with Merthyr based arts organisation called Abba Arts through community musician Gwyn C Jones, who brought and supported the young people from a variety of cultural backgrounds.

We delivered weekly sessions of song writing and singing sessions and encouraged the participants, many of whom had never performed in public before, to write their own songs and preform them in public. These sessions grew in popularity each week and the participants came from a variety of cultural backgrounds including Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Welsh and the Gypsy, Roma, Traveller community.

The project ended up with a performance as part of the Merthyr Rising festival on their cultural night at the Red House, Merthyr, 2019. The end result was very successful with the participants recording the music they had written and performing in public for the first time. The participants also recorded the songs they wrote in a local studio, please see the photographs and videos of the participants performing as part of the project below. This project was funded through Arts Council of Wales’ Lottery Participation fund.

Community Music Wales want to pay special tribute to one of the participants on this project Mary-Anne Coffey whose fantastic vocal performances brought the project to life.