This week, the Urdd Eisteddfod – a youth festival which celebrates Welsh language and culture – visits Cardiff Bay. Cardiff student, volunteer and competitor Nia Eyre\u00a0(Welsh 2017-) told us what the Urdd means to her.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Cardiff Bay was\ntransformed into a lively maes for the National Eisteddfod in August last year,\nand this week the Urdd has taken over the same setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Urdd camps\nare amazing and unique places. There are four camps: in the Bay in Cardiff,\nLlangrannog, Cardiganshire, Glan-Llyn near the Bala and a less well known one\nin Pentre Ifan, Pembrokshire. I\u2019m proud to say that I have stayed at all four.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m sure that\neveryone who has experienced Llangrannog can remember fearing the \u2018Black Nun\u2019 \u2013\na strange tradition where the older kids went around at night wearing black to\nscare the younger children! I never did, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, as a Cardiff student, I\u2019m so proud to see the Urdd coming to the Bay.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
At the opening concert, I performed on stage at the the Millennium Center with Aelwyd y Waun Ddyfal. It was an incredible (although a bit overwhelming!) experience and I\u2019m so looking forward to competing with them on the final Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve competed at the Eisteddfod nearly every year since I\u2019ve been old enough to remember, and I hope that we will beat our rivals in a competition or two this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s not all about winning: I feel quite comfortable in presenting and speaking publicly, and it’s the fact that I have stepped onto the Urdd stage since I was in primary school that has given me that confidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, the Urdd has always helped me to become the person I am. I went to Llangrannog many times as a child, but it was a different experience to go there as a swog [volunteer] with pupils from year 7 when I was in sixth form. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was great to develop leadership and pastoral skills – to name just a few – and I feel sure I\u2019ll continue to learn with every future visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 2019 Urdd Eisteddfod runs between 27 May-1 June in Cardiff Bay.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week, the Urdd Eisteddfod visits Cardiff Bay. Cardiff student, volunteer and competitor Nia Eyre (Welsh 2017-) told us what the Urdd means to her.","protected":false},"author":904,"featured_media":3922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,3,38],"tags":[129,189,188,187,184,186,139,124],"class_list":["post-3920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cardiff-connect","category-events","category-our-alumni","tag-cardiff","tag-city","tag-culture","tag-cymraeg","tag-eisteddfod","tag-urdd","tag-wales","tag-welsh"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/904"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3920"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3957,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3920\/revisions\/3957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}