After two years of stillness and silence, the Weaving Shed at the National Wool Museum is waking up, and the sound of machinery at work once again fills the air.
Now that the work of cleaning, repairing and conserving the building and the reconfiguring of the work space inside, the exciting work of learning how to operate the machinery has begun.
Before Melin Teifi closed two years ago, Raymond Jones was the last remaining maker of Welsh flannel, which is culturally important as it has been used extensively to make National Costume and workwear. This year Raymond has been in helping us to restore and tune the flannel loom, as it has been in storage and idle for two years.
We have produced a flannel warp that is unique to Amgueddfa Cymru and tied it on to the loom. We have learnt to use a warp stop which as the name suggests, stops the loom if any of the 1,500 threads break; reducing damage to the cloth and significantly reducing the time required to mend the cloth.
Also, as the yarn is a single ply it requires a higher level of skill and awareness when weaving with it. Working with single ply yarn has proved to be quite challenging and has presented us with different issues and problems which have challenged our understanding of how the looms function. It has been an interesting and rewarding experience.
By improving our knowledge and understanding of how the looms function we are able to consistently make better cloth. It is our intention to be able to make a variety of different cloth such as flannel, double cloth, and twill blankets. This will help us to generate income for the Museum and provide a more fulfilling visitor experience.
Over the last year, we as craftspeople at the museum have learnt a great deal, have encountered many obstacles and challenges as well as some frustrations. The greatest lesson we learnt as a team was… patience!
This year, the Weaving Shed will become alive again as we continue with the tradition of flannel making here in the Teifi Valley and we look forward to sharing this experience and history with you, our visitors!
Who are you? How and why did you join Demystifying Acquisitions?
My name is Abraham Makanjuola, I am originally from London and I work as a Health Economist for Bangor University. During my masters, I was working with the Sub-Sahara Advisory Panel (SSAP) on a documentary about narratives about the African Continent from the perspective of people from the diaspora linked with the UK. Following the release of this, I was approached about being involved with filming behind the scenes content for Demystifying Acquisitions. I was initially not sure, because I didn’t know what I had of value to offer the project, but I was met with encouragement and that helped me make my decision. I think that was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life to date.
How did you find the overall experience of working for Demystifying Acquisitions?
It was sensational, I would do it all over again exactly as it has played out. I genuinely have nothing negative to say and there aren’t any glaring issues that require addressing from my perspective. I think that is a testament to the people I was blessed enough to work with. I have enjoyed myself and learned so much over the past couple of years and I am grateful to all involved.
What set of skills did you gain while working on the project?
Specific to new museum knowledge, I learned about the conservation of artwork, how the bid and grant writing process works, and how to write labels for artworks in galleries. Wider softer skills I was able to develop were teamwork and collaboration, and project management.
What was your favourite part of working on the project?
My favourite part was being a part of the install day of the redisplay, I even got to put up one of the works which was cool. Prior to this day though, my favourite part was learning about label writing. Did you feel listened to? Were you able to influence or change things? What instance? Throughout the process we were given complete autonomy and were encouraged and supported with our group decisions. With this support we were able to respect museum practices but also shake things up and challenge how things have previously been done. We did have push back for certain decisions we made but there was always mutual understanding and respect.
In March 2024, I became part of a team of volunteers at National Museum Cardiff, our objective to setup and maintain a second-hand bookstall in the main hall of the museum.
I have a background in education, community arts, and creative writing. When the opportunity to volunteer as bookseller with National Museum Cardiff came about, I eagerly applied and was over the moon to have been invited to join. Being involved in the running of the second-hand bookstall resonates with my, and the museum’s, commitment to making education accessible. At the stall, we always have a host of history, science, and arts books available for children and adults. The bookstall also promotes an ease of access to a wide variety of fiction books, which thrills the creative writer in me.
Whenever I go into the museum, I am warmed by how interested everyone is in the bookstall. I often chat with visitors about their unique finds, or how excited they are to get stuck into a new book, as well as talking about the museum and its exhibits. Members of staff at the museum are always taking an interest too, and I’ve gotten to know some members of the front of house team well. It is always nice hearing about their book finds, or updates about the money the stall has raised, or to catch up and chat about how our weeks have been going.
We stock the bookstall with second-hand books donated to us by members of museum staff, and members of the public via donations to St Fagans National Museum of History, at which they have their own successful second-hand bookstall. I go into the museum once a week to sort through these donated books, in addition to tidying up and restocking the bookstall. Sorting books sees me sort books by genre, and alphabetise the fiction, as well as to make sure that books are marked with a suggested donation. Green =50p, Blue =£1, Yellow =£2, and our red stickers mark custom prices, usually to highlight rare editions, or bundles.
Sorting through the books is a great joy, we never know what is going to come in, and there are always fascinating gems to be found. I’ll set myself up in the volunteer hub, usually with an audiobook or some music and make my way through the book piles. Some of my favourite donations have been the unique specialist books donated by museum staff, books that you simply wouldn’t find in your average bookshop. But the fact is, I never know what is going to turn up. Several finds which have stood out to me, and highlight the diversity of books that come in, include: the score to Westside Story, a guide to scuba diving, a book of Mastermind questions, and an omnibus of Alien vs Predator novels! Just goes to show that it’s always worth popping in to see what’s there.
Being a part of the bookstall has been greatly rewarding, I’ve gotten to know lots of museum volunteers and staff alike, and my relationship with the museum has provided me with opportunities to attend unique talks and events for volunteers, such as our tour of National Roman Legion Museum, back in November ‘24. Notably, I am proud of the money that the bookstall has raised for the museum, £4300.88 at the most recent count up by staff!
The second-hand bookstall is made up of four bookcases which can be found in the main hall of National Museum Cardiff. Books can be purchased by making a donation at the card reader, or by dropping some cash into the collection box beside the shelves.
It’s LGBTQ+ History Month and this year’s theme is Activism and Social Change. Founded by Schools Out in 2025, LGBTQ+ History Month creates a dedicated space to celebrate our diverse and rich LGBTQ+ history.
To mark the occasion, we interviewed our principal curator of LGBTQ+ collections at Amgueddfa Cymru to explore the items in our collections that capture these key moments in Wales’ LGBTQ+ activism history.
Hi Mark, would you like to introduce yourself and tell us more about your role at Amgueddfa Cymru?
So yes, I’m Mark Etheridge. I'm the Principal Curator of Collection Development: LGBTQ+ at Amgueddfa Cymru based at St Fagans National Museum of History.
I started this role in developing the LGBTQ+ collection back in 2019, at a time when there were a very small number of objects that could be tagged as LGBTQ+ related. These objects were predominantly around some historic figures, pride events, and Section 28, but they were in no way representative of the cross-section of the whole LGBTQ+ community across Wales, both in the past and in contemporary experiences.
I’ve worked with a variety of community groups and individuals over the last few years to build up a collection that's far more representative and we now have a collection of over 2,200 items tagged as LGBTQ+.
With it being LGBTQ+ History Month, the theme for this year is Activism and Social Change. With your knowledge of LGBTQ+ history in Wales and in your own lived experience, what changes have you seen?
This year’s theme fits in well with our collections and our new LGBTQ+ display case in St Fagans, Wales is… Proud, which is the first permanent display of LGBTQ+ history at Amgueddfa Cymru. The display shows how equal rights have changed over the past 50-60 years and are currently evolving and changing today. We’ve seen, and this is what the new case goes into, things like the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967, the formation of groups like the Cardiff Gay Liberation Front in the early 1970s, protests against Section 28 in the late 1980s and 90s, through to some of the most recent trans rights protests against things like conversion therapy, which have been happening in Cardiff and across Wales over the past few years.
The areas that I’ve been collecting over the more recent years are the changes in 2021 to the ban on gay and bisexual men being allowed to donate blood, along with the Church in Wales Bill which allowed same-sex marriages and civil partnerships to be blessed from September 2021.
So, I think that the current protests and activism around improvements to equal rights shows that it’s still ongoing today and it didn’t end in 1967.
Would you be able to tell us more about the items on display at St Fagans that touch on those moments in LGBTQ+ activist history?
One of the items in the case is the Church in Wales Bill, I collected a number of items around the legalities of it, along with a handwritten speech by the Bishop of Llandaff who spoke in support of the bill.
To accompany these items and to bring a personal element to this historic moment, I collected an order of service for two gay men who had their marriage blessed following the bill.
With a lot of the collecting that I’m doing, it’s not just about the facts around the changes in equal rights, it’s about how it affects the LGBTQ+ community and the personal stories around them.
It’s really special that we can capture the personal experiences behind these historic moments. Could you tell us a bit about how you go about acquiring these pieces, especially when they are personal items?
Sometimes it’s reaching out to people through social media or you happen to meet somebody who offers to donate an item to our collections.
Part of it is also working with certain organisations; Trans Aid Cymru have been very supportive of my work and have helped me collect placards that had been used at various trans rights protests which they held in Wales.
It’s important that we build connections with members of the LGBTQ+ community, whether that’s individually or as support groups, and that we provide a safe space for the collection and stories to be told.
In addition to Trans Aid Cymru, have you worked with other LGBTQ+ charities and groups? And which ones do you believe need more of a spotlight?
I’ve worked with a few groups like Glitter Cymru and Pride Cymru but also worked with the smaller Pride groups.
There are a few of them who I recently reached out to and have been supportive in donating objects to our collections, such as Merthyr Tydfil Pride, Pride Caerffili and Flint Pride.
I think all of the ones I’ve mentioned are important to support, as the smaller Pride events in the local communities are vital in allowing people to attend Pride whilst also having the LGBTQ+ community be represented and seen in smaller communities.
It’s about visibility, Glitter Cymru have been very supportive when I first started in this role in 2019, and they provide a very specific need in Wales of supporting LGBTQ+ global majority people. There’s lots of different charities and lots of different groups, all supporting many different areas and with their own value.
If we think about the new display at St Fagans and our wider collection of LGBTQ+ items, what piece would you say resonates with you the most?
It’s quite a personal one, we have a sign from a pub called The King’s Cross in Cardiff, and that was one of the first gay pubs I went into after I came out. It was a gay venue from the early 70s right through to when it closed in 2011.
I have that personal connection there and I think our collections are important from that perspective, you want people to resonate with them for whatever reason, whether that’s to encourage them to become more activist, or to allow them to connect with an item on a personal level where it brings back certain memories.
We want the museum collections to allow people to make those connections.
Absolutely, and going back to Activism and Social Change, it doesn’t necessarily need to be a protest. At times, it’s just existence.
Yeah exactly, and I think that’s something I recently mentioned in a talk about our Reg Mickisch and George Walton collection from On The Red Hill. I think they are an example of that, as them living their everyday life together during a time when it was illegal is a form of activism in itself.
Activism isn’t just about protesting, simply existing as an LGBTQ+ person, especially in times where it was and is illegal or taboo, is a form of activism in itself.
That’s something I’m quite keen for the displays to show that it isn’t just about activism in terms of protesting and pride, but that there are lots of stories just about LGBTQ+ people living their everyday lives in Wales.
As well as the new LGBTQ+ display case in St Fagans, what would you like to achieve next?
We’re still actively collecting LGBTQ+ history, and we especially want more items around early activism and early stories about LGBTQ+ people living in Wales.
We’ve got the new case in St Fagans and LGBTQ+ related things, say, in the art department at National Museum Cardiff, but we’ve got less on some of our other sites.
So I think the next step, is to start using the collection to build more displays and weave it into the story of each site and everything we do.
How would you compare the history of LGBTQ+ Activism and Social Change, to activist groups of today and the political landscape?
The fight for equal rights is still ongoing in lots of ways. The worry for some people is that the rights granted can be rolled back. They can just as easily be rolled back as they can go forward. We can’t take certain things for granted, and we do have to remember that.
You know, this is evident in things like the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967 where it was only partial decriminalisation under very specific circumstances.
It’s like the Church in Wales Bill, they went one step to allow same-sex marriages to be blessed in the Church of Wales but didn’t go the further step to allow them to be married.
It's little things like that, where it may be one step forward, but it isn’t necessarily going the full way.
Thank you Mark, for taking the time to discuss our LGBTQ+ collections in relation to Activism and Social Change. I’m excited to see the collection grow and for it to become more of a permanent feature in the story of our museums.
Now, we’d like to finish by asking what is your favourite item in our collections outside of your work?
This glass plate negative was taken by Mary Dillwyn in 1854 or 1855. Mary is one of the first women photographers in Wales and this negative is from a large collection at Amgueddfa Cymru taken by members of the Dillwyn Llewelyn family. I love that this image captures what is probably the first photograph taken of a snowman in Wales; with the collection also containing many firsts in Wales such as the first photograph of bonfire night.
You can explore more of our LGBTQ+ collections online, visit our new LGBTQ+ display case Wales is… Proud at St Fagans, or discover our Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners collection in our current Streic! 84-85 Strike! exhibition in National Museum Cardiff, open until 27 April 2025.
In this series of Strike Stories we hear the highs and lows of that life changing year through the eyes of miners, families, police officers and politicians as they recall what life was like in 84–85.
The Strike Stories form part of the Streic 84–85 Strike exhibition which is on display at National Musem Cardiff until April 27 2025.
I was one of the last set of apprentices they took on with the old National Coal Board and ended up working at Maerdy colliery. I was a bit of a naughty boy in school and I applied for a few apprenticeships in gas, telecoms, all sorts. But I’m the fifth generation in a mining family and ended up following suit. At 17, I got a mining craft apprenticeship, which was to get you ready for management further along the line.
I’ll never forget my first day going underground. My stomach was churning as the cage dropped down the shaft.
We were on strike pretty much every year once I’d joined, usually about pay and conditions. The Strike in ’84 was different. It was all about the preservation of our jobs and the mining communities.
I was one of the lucky ones – I didn’t have a family to support and I was still living at home. My father made me pay rent right the way through the strike, he said that if I supported it then I should feel the hardship of having no money exactly the same as everyone else on strike.
We show of hands vote about coming out on the Sunday in the Maerdy Working Men’s Hall. The world’s media were on our doorstep waiting to see if we would back the Yorkshire miners (Cortonwood is where it started). We voted to come out on strike.
We started to travel to other mines and join picket lines to try and talk to the lads going to work and persuade them to join us. Often, we’d be turned back by the police en route – I was convinced we’d had our phones tapped as there was no way they’d have known about the little roads we took, otherwise. Once, we ended up getting pulled over and the coach driver was told he’d be arrested if he took us any further. So we got off the bus and in the middle of the night walked through the drizzle to our designated pits that we were going to picket.
There was a new employment Law – Tebbit’s Law, about not being allowed to picket in groups of more than six. Occasionally, we broke it. At Newstead Colliery, when we broke the line, a copper grabbed by finger and bent it back. then put my arm behind my back, another copper came alongside and was punching me in the side and I was bundled into a police van. I got taken to the station and put in a cell along with a few others from my pit. At about 3am I was taken from the cell and interviewed by CID who began with ‘Are you a member of the Communist Party? Are you a Scargill supporter?’ and so on. We were in overnight. We were given a piece of toast and something pretending to be tea and sent to court in handcuffs, which was humiliating. The police inspector told the court there were around fifty people and that I was the instigator, pulled from a group of 50 or so pickets. This was a lie.
I was charged with Breach of the Peace, the NUM lawyer said: ‘Plead guilty or you’ll be sent away, the NUM will pay your fine.’ I was still a teenager, so I took the advice and pleaded guilty, even before any statements were read out. The magistrate told me that if I appeared in front of him again he would be sent to Risley (Grisly Risley as it was known) remand centre.
It was rough. There were times we’d be kicked in the shins or have our feet stamped on so we’d end up wearing our work boots, for protection. Once, a copper started whacking my head repeatedly on the bonnet of a car. There were reporters there. I shouted ‘I hope you’re going to report this!’. The media were dead set against us, they painted this misconception that we were a bunch of thugs! It was the state and the police that were the thugs, and there should be an enquiry as to what involvement the government had on the strike and the police thuggery.
We were fighting for a full year – not just for our jobs, but for our communities. Going underground builds such incredible, tight camaraderie, we had each other’s backs. It was character-building and we were all in it together – before the strike, during and after. Everyone worked in or around the Pit. The impact was wide-reaching. I had an invitation from Oxford and went and spoke at a fund raising event. They raised an awful lot of money for us and sent us food parcels.
My only regrets - being unable to save our jobs, communities and subsidiary industries. And that I’d pleaded guilty to a breach of the peace when the police had lied. I was not guilty.
