Category Archives: Works

Writers and the Sherman Theatre

May 17, 2017Blog, PortfolioPrint, Print, Writerangela

A website is one thing but a person is the real thing. Gethin Evans, Associate Director of the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff gave the Cardiff branch of The Writers’ Guild an up-to-the-minute tour of opportunities for engagement and a sense of the Theatre’s ambitions and future projects in a lively encounter at May’s meeting.

The Sherman’s Artist Development page has not quite caught up with the calendar as most of its references are to 2016 so it was enlightening to get a sense of how the various projects are developing.

Continue reading Writers and the Sherman Theatre →

Writing Your Novel – Ty Newydd On Tour

May 8, 2017Blog, PortfolioPrint, Writerangela

The very first Tȳ Newydd on Tour day was held in Cardiff on Saturday 6th May as the writing centre begins to showcase its courses around Wales. A dozen writers got a flavour of ‘A Novel Journey: Writing a Novel from Beginning to End’ which will run at the centre near Criccieth from Monday 12th to Saturday 17th June. A few places are left and the taster day was a great advertisement.

Continue reading Writing Your Novel – Ty Newydd On Tour →

Trafod dyfodol y cyfryngau yng Nghymru – GOLWG

April 10, 2017PortfolioPrint, Writerangela

Discussing the future of the media in Wales – article in GOLWG magazine

Mae mwy i’r cyfryngau Cymraeg nag S4C, yn ôl Angela Graham, cadeirydd pwyllgor cyfryngau’r Sefydliad Materion Cymreig a fu’n trafod y dyfodol mewn cynhadledd ddiweddar…

… roedd cytundeb unfrydol bod angen strategaeth ac ymchwil ac yn y pendraw arweiniad gan Lywodraeth Cymru.

Ebrill 6 / April 6 2017

My Literature Wales Writers’ Bursary 2017

March 30, 2017Blog, Industry, Portfolio, PortfolioPrint, Print, Writerangela

I am thrilled to have been awarded a Literature Wales Writers’ Bursary for 2017. I admit (career suicide for a writer!) to being at a loss for words to describe how encouraging I find it to have expert opinion, and public money, invested in me. Maybe ‘inspiring’ will do the job. My congratulations to all the bursary recipients.

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Merthyr Meirionnydd – A Welsh Martyr

March 23, 2016Blog, Portfolio, PortfolioTelevision, Producerangela

“Here’s a man who plays hide and seek with the secret police and cuts his prison cell bars to escape as he faces the gallows”, says Guto Harri in this 60-minute documentary about St John Roberts (repeated on Sunday, 3rd April at 10pm on S4C with English sub-titles). “He acts more like James Bond than a saint. The issues underlying the history are echoed today, dealing as they do with someone considered to be a religious extremist, living abroad and considered a threat to the very fabric of the state.”

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Faith and Violence – the journalist’s role

May 31, 2015Blog, PortfolioPrint, Print, Teacher, Teaching, Uncategorizedangela

On New Year’s Day this year the Western Mail published an article by the Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Wales, Saleem Kidwai. He claimed that a precious achievement in Welsh cultural life is in jeopardy and that a generation have felt ‘rejected by their fellow Welshmen’.

Welsh-Muslim youth who thought themselves like any other Welsh person got a rude awakening post-9/11 — a sort of cultural shock that they were not like any other Welsh person. Overnight, they were the other, the enemy…

As Mr Kidwai set out the traumatic ramifications of this tragic dissociation I felt the force of his appeal that, “As a society… We have to reject any attempts to marginalize Muslims as second-class citizens” but I was perplexed as to how to go about that.

Until I perceived a potential response from the world of journalism itself – from journalism in Wales.

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Passion and Policy – Documentary in Wales

May 25, 2015Blog, Commentator, Media, Uncategorizedangela

On Friday 29^th May Documentary Wales/ Dogfen Cymru is holding a symposium in Cardiff:

to discuss the future of documentary film in Wales. Drawing together a range of talent from Wales and beyond, the day will be an opportunity to meet a diverse collection of individuals who share your passion for documentary. The focus of the day will be on:

Strengthening the community of documentary film makers currently working in Wales

Exploring ways of building the audience for documentary film in Wales

Discussing future plans for supporting documentary film within the Welsh production sector

Without good policy no social endeavour flourishes as it might. Structures start from policy. Policies are not made by machines but by people and people have beliefs and values and prejudices, all of which can be discussed, debated and shaped into principles on which actions are based. Those actions influence both what is possible in the social sphere and what becomes impossible.

To make Wales a place in which documentary flourishes we need policies which build sound platforms for documentary. That means taking an interest in policy for broadcasting, digital media and cinema – at least. Continue reading Passion and Policy – Documentary in Wales →

Documentary practice – a secret room of golden light

May 25, 2015Blog, Media, Teacher, Teachingangela

In the hour-long class I gave to Michigan State University students we had to use a large teaching room in order to have space to dance. On the back wall are four posters which I designed last year for the teaching I did on the Documentary Pathway which is an option on the M.A. in International Journalism at Cardiff University. I stopped teaching on this course last year but the posters are still there so I took advantage of them briefly. The posters were an experiment in displaying some basic principles of practice. I’d like to focus on one of them here. It’s from an interview given by the late great American documentarian, Albert Maysles (Salesman, Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens et al).

He addresses something which documentary-makers do not, in my experience, speak about often or readily. Maybe this is merely symptomatic of the fact that I’m of a generation that learned on the job and that revered good practice but talked little about theory. (Perhaps I’ll get a chance to explore that in the upcoming Wales Documentary Day, of which more in another post.)

Maysles talks about the gaze. Continue reading Documentary practice – a secret room of golden light →

What exactly IS empathy, butt?

May 24, 2015Blog, Teacher, Teachingangela

Continuing the hour-long class I gave to Communications students from Michigan State University, we took a look at the notion of witness in Documentary. This was done in admittedly very simple terms.

The role of a documentary-maker involves serving the circulation of life within the community and delivering the Real and the True. One of the ways of doing that is by means of facilitating witness.

Continue reading →

Munificent Documentary

May 24, 2015Blog, Media, Teacher, Teaching, Uncategorizedangela

Some municipes at work on a Green Bay Media documentary shoot!

In the previous post I outlined the first half of an hour’s class I gave to students of Communications from Michigan State University as part of their British Mass Media Programme visit to the UK. Having considered how the ‘I’ of the film-maker interacts with the ‘You’ of other people, who are the subjects of the film, to create the ‘Us’ of the viewing community, we moved on to reflect on what Communication is, and what it is for, and furthermore what the role of a professional communicator might be – all in 20 minutes! Continue reading Munificent Documentary →

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