: Museums, Exhibitions and Events

Wales Tourism Week highlights the importance of the tourism industry in Wales as a generator of jobs, income and building a profile for Wales’ heritage and culture. The Week is coordinated by the Wales Tourism Alliance (WTA), which is the umbrella body for the industry.

Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales plays a significant role in telling the story of the history and culture of Wales through its museums.

Celebrate St David’s Day with us by enjoying special activities and events to mark this day that honours the patron saint of Wales.

You can practice your Welsh with traditional Welsh food, singing, crafts, stalls and all sorts of activities for children at Big Pit National Coal Museum on 27 February.

Caerleon is the home of the true Romano-Welsh experience. At the National Roman Legion Museum on 28 February you can make Welsh cakes, mini dragon standards and leeks to wear on St David’s day itself.

On the day itself on 1 March, you can enjoy St David’s Day celebrations at National Museum Cardiff and St Fagans National History Museum. 

The celebrations continue at the National Waterfront Museum on 5 March with a day of all things Welsh. There will be performances, arts and crafts, music and a twpmath featuring folk music into the evening from Tawerin Twmpath, RAFFDAM, Ric-a-Do & Gildas.

Photography Competition

To reflect the Visit Wales ‘Year of Adventure’ theme a new digital photographic competition is launched by the Wales Tourism Alliance. The competition is for young people aged 11 to 19 to produce photographs of Wales which highlights Wales as the Land of Adventure. For more details go to www.wta.org.uk.

Since late 2012, with the centenary of the First World War in mind, curators at St Fagans have been involved in a project to digitise objects with relevance to the conflict. The results are on the First World War database which you can see on this website. But in 2016, the project is still very much ongoing. One aspect which has surprised everyone involved is that objects with stories to tell about the war are still being rediscovered.

Before we began looking specifically for these objects, their potential to reveal stories about the conflict had not always been realised, and connections between objects not always made. Huge numbers of objects were often collected in the past - some in the years immediately following the war - meaning that the information recorded at the time was often limited.

Sometimes a bit of luck has been involved. As part of the Making History project, thousands of items from the collection have moved between storerooms and conservation labs. While auditing an area containing military and civilian uniform, I recently found a collection of badges and buttons of relevance to the period, taking the extent of our First World War collections beyond what we had previously realised.

As artefacts of war, these objects often have poignant associations. One lapel badge was recently found complete with a tiny photograph of a soldier who was killed in 1915. A shoulder badge and button of the Grenadier Guards were found belonging to a soldier who was involved in the retreat from Mons in 1914, and of whom there is also a photograph in our collections. We have also discovered objects from areas of the conflict previously thought to be unrepresented in the collections, such as this South Wales Borderers cap badge commemorating the Egyptian campaign.

The exciting aspect of working on this project has been the discovery of collections not previously categorized by their First World War associations. We have uncovered objects in a variety of areas: among pictures and photographs, letters and certificates, medical equipment, textiles, badges and medals. Not only can these items be seen on our First World War database, but some of the stories we have discovered will be told within the displays planned for the new galleries here at St Fagans –  just one example of enabling the full richness of our collections to be permanently shared.

#WalesRemembers #CymrunCofio

This project is supported by the Armed Forces Community Covenant Grant Scheme.

Everyone knows that baby animals rule the internet – and this St David’s Day sees the return of #lambcam, a live web feed giving a 24/7 view of all the action in the lambing shed at St Fagans National History Museum in Cardiff. The project launched in 2015 and became an instant hit on social media – but underneath the cuteness there’s a serious educational message…

So whether you’re a social media superstar, wannabe shepherd or a St Fagans frequent flyer, there’s no excuse not to get involved in this year’s baby boom at the Museum.

#lambcam #instalamb @StFagans_Museum

While Nils, Fern and Imogen get stuck into searching archives and stores, looking at the Museum's collections and working with visitors and groups to get their ideas, how about we think about what play areas we like? what local ones have you played in or taken children to and they loved? what ones have you been to that you didn't like? have you seen play areas that just look amazing? What makes a playground good? what do want from a playground? does it have to look nice? does it have to look like a playground? I'd be really interested in hearing your thoughts and ideas.

Meanwhile, I have been collecting images of play areas which I think are good design, look fun, are imaginative, look exciting... i'm not suggesting we have a play area exactly like these in St Fagans, but it wouldn't it be great to have something different and unexpected?

Here are some images of the work of Nils Norman who is designing our new play area in St Fagans. For more information about his work and other projects, please check out his website