Press Releases

Hollywood star Michael Sheen has tonight (Thursday, April 7) helped to launch a Swansea school’s new interactive book featuring another Welsh legend – King Arthur.

The Frost/Nixon and The Queen star made a surprise appearance at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea on Thursday evening to launch the new book King Arthur & Other Tales, published by Ysgol-Pen-Y-Bryn special school in Swansea.

Sheen has provided the narration for the e-book version, which will be free to download from the school’s website.

The interactive book, along with original mosaic artwork from the pupils and a stunning replica of the Sword in the Stone, will appear in an exhibition at the National Waterfront Museum from Friday, April 7. The exhibition, which is supported by the People’s Postcode Lottery, also shows how the pupils, who have a wide range of additional learning needs, visited museums and specific sites like Arthur’s Stone in Gower to find out about the legend surrounding King Arthur in Wales, as well as making crowns, heraldic shields and designing maps of the fabled Camelot.

Proceeds from the book, which forms part of the Welsh Government’s 2017 Year of Legends, will be sold in aid of food poverty charity The Trussell Trust.

The book is the latest in a series created by Ysgol Pen-Y-Bryn for charity. Previous editions have looked at the legend of Star Wars and Jack and the Beanstalk.

Notes to editors:

Amgueddfa Cymru’s partnerships with over 120 charities and community organizations have established us as a beacon for co-production work and volunteer programmes in the cultural sector in the UK. A leading UK funder, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, described us as a “beacon” of excellent practice in the UK.

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A hoard of bronze artefacts will be presented to Pontypool Museum

A major exhibition celebrating the bold and colourful work of one of Britain’s most renowned post-war abstract artists, Gillian Ayres, is on show at National Museum Cardiff. Gillian Ayres is the largest exhibition of Ayres’s work ever seen in the UK and is open from Saturday 8 April to 3 September 2017.

Tickets are now on sale for ‘Dinosaur Babies’, National Museum Cardiff’s big family friendly blockbuster exhibition this summer. Coming to Wales for the first time, this touring exhibition which is supported by players of the People’s Postcode Lottery provides a rare and exciting look at the life of dinosaurs bringing together some of the world’s most amazing finds of dinosaur eggs and embryos.

People learning Welsh will have an opportunity to enjoy speaking the language at a new national festival, thanks to a partnership between the National Centre for Learning Welsh, National Museum Wales and National Library of Wales.

Big, small, real or model, there’s something for everyone at the National Slate Museum’s annual Model Railway extravaganza coming up this half term, between 22-24 February 2017.