Cyunedau Cyslltiedig: Researching the Industrial and Post-Industrial Communities of the Swansea Valley

斯旺西和斯旺西河谷的城市以其工业历史，特别是铜业的兴衰而闻名，铜业在18世纪和19世纪成为世界上第一个全球一体化的重工业。随着斯旺西成为“铜都”，硅谷在英国工业革命中变得与煤炭布鲁克代尔一样重要，工人社区的发展深刻地影响了当地人和外来移民的生活，这些社区支持了煤炭和冶金行业的快速发展。同样，后代人的生活首先是由痛苦的去工业化过程塑造的，这一过程确保了到1950年斯旺西山谷已成为欧洲最大的工业荒地；然后是20世纪60年代和70年代实施的大规模土地开垦和再生项目。作为这些长期过程的结果，该地区拥有极其丰富而复杂的工业-城市-环境遗产，对此的研究有助于更好地理解该地区独特的历史和文化背景如何继续塑造生活在16.8%人口讲威尔士语的地区的人们的身份认同、地方感和生活质量。双语项目旨在巩固和扩大近年来斯旺西大学的艺术和人文研究人员与该大学地区腹地的一系列社区团体和组织建立的合作。该项目有两个主要目标：1.它寻求开发本身具有巨大价值的协作社区研究项目，2.为了实现这些目标，研究小组将与斯旺西大学档案、媒体服务和艺术中心以及四个外部合作伙伴密切合作，与该地区的正式和非正式社区团体接触。外部合作伙伴是：-斯旺西国家水堡博物馆；-西部格拉摩根档案馆；-斯旺西市县图书馆服务；-格拉摩根-格温特考古信托基金。许多不同的团体将从该项目中受益。首先，研究小组和项目合作伙伴聘请的社区团体和组织将从这项研究中受益，因为他们将自己产生成果，然后通过不同的媒体传播。这一过程极大地提高了该地区社区团体的知识和技能。社区团体研究成果的最终传播将通过增进对集体和个人历史的了解，使斯旺西和威尔士西南部的更广泛的公众受益。这一转变将有助于更好地了解该地区的传统和身份，以及它在地方、国家和全球背景下的位置意识。项目合作伙伴将从这个合作项目中受益，因为通过与高等教育和非高等教育研究人员的创造性接触。参与该项目的研究生(通过开放日等)和社区小组成员(再次通过开放日等参与)将直接受益于该项目，因为它将使他们获得合作项目的真实世界体验，并使两个小组都能够识别、发展和学习新的可转移技能，例如自我意识、主动性、团队合作、行动计划、领导力、沟通、网络、解决问题、灵活性等。这些可转移技能将对学生未来的职业生涯至关重要。

The City of Swansea and the Swansea Valley is defined by its industrial past, and especially by the rise and decline of the copper industry which became the world's first globally integrated heavy industry during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As Swansea became 'Copperopolis', and the Valley became as important as Coalbrookdale to Britain's Industrial Revolution, the lives of local people and in-coming migrants were profoundly shaped by the development of the workers' communities that supported the rapid growth of the coal and metallurgical industries. Equally, the lives of later generations were shaped first by the painful process of de-industrialisation which ensured that by 1950 the Swansea Valley had become the largest industrial wasteland in Europe; and then by large-scale land reclamation and regeneration projects implemented during the 1960s and 1970s. As a result of these long-run processes, the region has a remarkably rich yet complex industrial-urban-environmental heritage, and research into this informs a better understanding of how the unique historical and cultural context of the region continues to shape the identity, sense of place, and quality of life of the people who live in an area, where 16.8 percent of the population speaks Welsh.This multi-partner, bi-lingual project aims to consolidate and extend collaborations that have been established in recent years by arts and humanities researchers at Swansea University and a range of community groups and organisations across the university's regional hinterland.The project has two major objectives:1. It seeks to develop collaborative community research projects that will be of great worth in themselves, and2. It will very considerably enhance a major heritage-led urban regeneration project centred on the Swansea Valley, which brings significant added value.In order to achieve these objectives the research group will work closely with Swansea University's archives, media services, and Arts Centre, as well four external partners, to engage with formal and informal community groups across the region. The external partners are:- National Waterfornt Museum, Swansea;- West Glamorgan Archives Service;- The Libraries Service of City and County of Swansea;- Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust.A number of different groups will derive benefit from the project.First and foremost, the community groups and organisations engaged by the Research Group and Project Partners will benefit from the research because they will be generating outputs themselves and then disseminating them via different media. This process with greatly enhance the knowledge and skills of community groups across the region.The eventual dissemination of community group research findings will benefit the wider public in Swansea and south-west Wales by enhancing understanding of collective and individual histories. This turn will inform a better understanding of the region's heritage and identity, as well as its sense of place within local, national, and global contexts.The project partners will benefit from this collaborative project because through creative engagement with both HEI and non-HEI researchers. The project will serve to widen access to the partners' resources and will help to facilitate the increased use of their facilities, knowledge, and skills.Postgraduate students involved in the project (through open days, etc) and also community group members (again involved via open days, etc) will directly benefit from the project because it will give them real-world experiences of collaborative projects and enable both groups to identify, develop and also learn new transferable skills, for example - self-awareness, initiative, teamwork, action planning, leadership, communication, networking, problem solving, flexibility, etc. These transferable skills will be essential for students in their future careers.