raconteur - a person who tells anecdotes in a skilful and amusing way
Its been a good year, busy ...... talking, lecturing, tour guiding, doing workshops. I have scanned the 2014 Diary and here's a rough count :
During 2014 I did around 30 talks, mainly on Archaeology for various societies around north Wales. The most popular lecture by far was on "What is Archaeology" but a few of the Welsh language / literary societies opted for a talk on "writing articles" and the inspiration behind various articles, this comes as a result of my weekly column for Herald Gymraeg.
Around March 1st / St David's Day and on a couple of other occasions I also gave 5 'After Dinner Speeches'.
In Anhrefn days we would do anything between fifty and a hundred gigs a year - many of these gigs in smaller Welsh communities and the talks have a similar feel, in and out of community centres in small villages, but its all the same mission - to deal with who we are and where we are - its always about Wales and Welsh culture.
I did around 25 media interviews, give or take a few, mostly BBC Radio Cymru / Radio Wales and a few for S4C. Its as close as we get in Wales to being a 'pundit' - some of this was reviewing the papers for Radio Cymru and there were quite a few News items wanting comment. And on the subject of S4C they broadcasted their archaeological series 'Olion' earlier this year for which I contributed to 2 programmes.
Classes and workshops come up to 106 - these include Dynamo sessions, WEA classes and Cymraeg i Oedolion classes for Bangor University. The classes are brilliant. This year I had the privilege of making new friends at Abersoch and Golan - its a two way street, I talk archaeology and they provide local knowledge.
Summer was busy with guided walks / tour guiding with around 33 days of guiding / events. Again this is mainly archaeology with sites such as Barclodiad y Gawres, Bryn Celli Ddu, Segontium and Tre'r Ceiri being popular but I also did a Welsh Pop Music Tour of Caernarfon this summer as part of Gwyl Arall which was fun.
I also started a Monday afternoon show on Mon FM this summer (2-4pm) - with a weekly guest and generally looking at art, culture and the history of Anglesey.
I have presented 24 shows during 2014.
All the playlists are listed on the Blog
http://rhysmwyn.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/mon-fm-mona-antiqua-playlist.html
The MonFM show has been a pleasure. Its all quite underground and its nice to work with no pressure, away from mainstream media. At the moment there is no listen again facility, or rather we have not uploaded any of my shows. Again I quite like the idea of this, catch it live on monfm.net or miss it.
There were many highlights but my conversation with Dafydd Iwan on Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Paul Robeson is one that I am particularly pleased with - this was Dafydd under a different spotlight - talking about his early musical influences.
2015 looks to be busier still. I have a book out called 'Cam i'r Gorffennol' on north Wales Archaeology which will be promoted via talks in the new year. So far I have done 2 official book signing sessions.
@awenmeirion
Another event that I look forward to is a discussion panel hosted by Cymdeithas yr Iaith on the 10th January at Aberystwyth to discuss the radical and political aspects of Welsh language music. Should be the usual mix of controversy and anarchy http://ow.ly/i/7WyUx
Onwards and upwards !
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