On Monday 12th November, our We Are 100 Project came to a close with a fantastic celebration Unconference at The Angel Hotel, Cardiff.
The aim of the day was to celebrate the amazing achievements of the 60 young champions from Merthyr Tydfil and Swansea YMCA who led their very own social action projects to peer educate their communities on the Suffrage Movement, and the importance of using your voice to make changes in society.
Our Merthyr Tydfil champions were a mix of young people from Gellideg, Soar, Georgetown, Willows, and Aber Arts. Together these youth clubs collaborated, running engaging and interactive workshops with their young people from August through to November, all around the toolkit. In October, they held a showing of the film ‘Suffragette’, and also had a historian visit from Cyfarthfa Museum where they learned all about the local history of Suffragists in their area. The thorough research they had carried out on Suffragist Rose Mary Crawshay from Merthyr Tydfil, later became the focus for their Social Action Presentation, which took place at Theatr Soar on the 8th November. The Presentation evening was creative and educational, there were dramatic readings, art displays, and songs all prepared by the young people with help from their youth workers.
The event consisted of talks on the Suffrage Movement as well as a devised performance piece created by participants who engaged with the overall project. Additionally Young Champions performed solo songs that they had composed as part of the project and also sang other songs relating to the theme. The event finished with a charity auction of art pieces created by Young Carers at YMCA Swansea.
Alongside the performance participants displayed a suffragette exhibition provided by Swansea Council.
The overall performance was well received by all attendees and in total £200.10 was raised for YMCA Swansea, which was fantastic!
