Case Studies

Staying relevant helps to encourage new audiences to experience Welsh language and culture. Having a multitude of local partners and businesses helps to determine a new timetable each year and the event isn’t afraid to try new things. From showcasing emerging bilingual artists to giving a platform for local school children to perform, Tafwyl encourages everyone to sample Welsh culture and language, whether they speak the language or not. Other events could adopt a similar approach in taking small steps to showcase Welsh culture and language – by showcasing bilingual artists or iconic Welsh sites for example.

“Tafwyl is a great opportunity for people in Wales, outside of Wales, those who speak Welsh, those who don’t, to come to the city centre to enjoy the festival. To learn about the language, culture and the brilliant environment that we have in Tafwyl.” Menter Caerdydd.

Tafwyl has grown from a small-scale event in a local pub to attracting over 38,000 visitors in person and hundreds of thousands of views online. How? Menter Caerdydd, the organisation who manages Tafwyl, says that it’s down to a strong brand and media partnerships.

Tafwyl created its own brand - including a bold typography-style logo and promoted itself on its own social media channels. But in order to grow, Tafwyl needed support from bigger platforms outside of the event itself. Getting buy-in from local media, BBC Radio Cymru and S4C was crucial in helping the small brand to grow and to appeal to new visitors and audiences. The festival did this by offering exclusive-rights content to the broadcasters and during the Covid-19 pandemic, Tafwyl was the first festival of its kind to go completely digital, so growing its online following - and Welsh Government’s first test event during the pandemic. This opened up new audiences and grew the brand further with visitors further afield who, continue to engage with Tafwyl online.

“It certainly pushed us to try things that we wouldn’t have tried otherwise. And that digital element, I think is something that will remain into the future because we know there is a market audience for Tafwyl in all part of the Wales, in all parts of Britain and in all parts of the world.” Menter Caerdydd.

Tafwyl says its engagement with the local community and volunteers is down to strong local relationships and partnerships with organisations and businesses, working with over 40 partners to attract and recruit over 100 volunteers each year.

The organisers emphasise the importance of year-round communication and engagement with volunteers- not just before and during the festival each summer. They do this by hosting open community events such as coffee mornings, school, parent and baby and toddler events - attracting existing Tafwyl goers who want to continue to be part of the festival, as well as new people who are then given the opportunity to be part of Tafwyl as a volunteer.

In the lead up to the festival, they provide pre-event briefings- bringing those interested together to talk about the timetable, the line-up and different roles and responsibilities, matching people to the best opportunity. They also keep in touch with volunteers directly after the event, sharing with them success stories and other events that are in the calendar, to continue engagement post-festival. 

“Our volunteers are so important and we ensure we host events before Tafwyl to help them, we stay in touch with them after the event and we host a range of briefings with them to ensure they’re prepared and ready for the weekend.” Menter Caerdydd.

The event organisers - World Rowing - and their local and national partners, including Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, put sustainability at the heart of the event and became the first rowing event of its kind to achieve the IS0 20121 certification - an international quality mark for events that demonstrates sustainability understanding, planning and action.

Funders ensured that the event would commit to sustainability factors by specifying, in their funding proposal, that support was conditional on working towards the ISO standard, ensuring buy-in from all partners and organisers from day one.

The event organisers worked with local partners to support the roll-out of a dedicated sustainability action plan. As a key partner, Pembrokeshire Coast National Park’s contribution to the effort saw them second a member of staff to work full time as Sustainability Manager for the event. This was an invaluable and practical way of ensuring that local knowledge was effectively shared in support of  the sustainability plan.

This event, and the contribution of the partners involved, are now held up as demonstrating good practice with other global events who are developing their approach to sustainability. 

“It was important to show that this type of event could maintain sustainability standards. The ISO certification was available so we decided to make our funding for the event conditional on the fact that the event worked towards that certification.” Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.

The event prides itself on embedding into the community and creating opportunities for everyone to be involved. The event organisers did this through creating two key planning groups - a Steering Group to help oversee the overall direction of the event (which included key funders and stakeholders) and a Planning Committee, consisting of local organisations, businesses and charities who held more of action-based roles.

Event organisers held open meetings in the town hall at an early stage, inviting local residents and businesses to come along and understand more about the event and opportunities to get involved. They partnered with organisations such as Saundersfoot Connect to communicate and engage with people who volunteered for other activities and events.

Having embedded into the local community and marketing volunteer opportunities through local partner channels from an early stage, the event exceeded its volunteer recruitment target of 200 volunteers known as ‘wave makers’, with over 250 people registering to volunteer at the event. A training package of physical and digital support was created for volunteers, including practical training and a ‘buddy’ system to ensure volunteers, locally and further afield, felt comfortable, prepared and excited for their role at the event.

“The local community fully embraced the event, they were really excited about it. Over 50% of our volunteers were from Saundersfoot and the surrounding area.” Rachel Dulai, Event Manager.

“A friend of mine told me about the event and suggested I could sign up to volunteer. I’d never been part of anything before so at first I was nervous, but you couldn’t fault the organisation and the way we were looked after. I was so pleased to be part of it and would love to volunteer again in the future.” Volunteer from Pembrokeshire.

The event took place along the Pembrokeshire coastline, national park and was situated right on the Wales Coastal Path - showcasing the Welsh landscape to audiences in Wales and for those visiting the event and watching online. 

For the organisers and partners involved, it was important to showcase the opportunity the event brought for all sectors, including tourism and hospitality. As part of the early community engagement, information was given to accommodation and hospitality providers for them to use the event in their own marketing. With visitors coming from overseas, the event helped many first-time visitors explore Wales, with many athletes and supporters using the ‘downtime’ to travel and holiday locally and in other parts of Wales. 

“The idea is that if we’re able to host a World Championship, then we can demonstrate how people want to visit our area and hope to attract similar international events in the future.” Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.

“I’ve never been to Wales but I will certainly be back- the conditions for the competition was exactly what you want to give it a competitive edge and the scenery is stunning.” Ben Mason, of the Nelson Rowing Club in New Zealand