Come and visit us at Margam Park this May
The GwyddonLe has been a highlight in the University's events calendar for a number of years, but this year is particularly special as we welcome the Urdd Eisteddfod to our region. In 2025, the Urdd Eisteddfod will be visiting Margam Park and once again, the GwyddonLe will offer a wealth of amazing activities to spark the imagination and showcase the innovative research projects of Swansea University staff and students.
The theme of the GwyddonLe this year is 'Roots,' and visitors will have the opportunity to learn about the roots of diseases on the Biomedical stand. The area housing the School of Medicine will see the return of the popular Teddy Hospital, as well as the opportunity to learn lifesaving skills. For the first time this year a Genomics stand will focus on DNA and how genes are inherited. With the Pharmacy crew, you can learn about the Physicians of Myddfai and how the natural world influences pharmacy today.
Discover the wonderful world of Welsh seaweed and micro algae on the Biosciences stand and learn about their health benefits, or become a geographer and try to prevent coastal flooding, and discover the history of our climate in ice. Mathematical Circus activities will challenge and entertain you, and the Stroop Challenge mat will return with the Psychology crew to see if you can say the colours rather than the words.
In our tech hub the E-Sports Wales car racing games will be back, as well as the Technocamps stand where there will be an opportunity to use coding and robotics skills. Escape to another world with the Virtual Reality team's games and learn about the digital heritage of Margam and the surrounding area with the Media crew's Digital Beginnings stand.
Throughout the week there will be a craft stall to create an origami heron to mark the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to coincide with 2025 being the Welsh Government's year of Wales and Japan. This is an opportunity to invite the youth of Wales to create these symbols of peace and write a message of peace on their wings. All these origamis will be displayed outside the GwyddonLe, with the exhibit increasing over the week. We will then send the origami to the Children's Peace Memorial at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The Welsh children's herons from the GwyddonLe will be added to the thousands of others that hang near the Children's Peace Memorial to commemorate the children killed by the atomic bomb and convey the will and desire of the children of Wales for peace for the future.
In addition to all this, the Morgan Institute Challenge, our popular public speaking competition, returns on Friday, May 30, where pupils from Ysgol Gwent Is Coed and Ysgol Bryn Tawe will present arguments against and in favour of the topic: 'Artificial intelligence could play a vital role in the future of healthcare in Wales'. The debating topic was set by Dr Jeff Davies, associate professor of molecular neurobiology at the Swansea University School of Medicine and Jeff will be present to judge the competition, along with Sioned Williams, Plaid Cymru Senedd Member for South Wales West.
Professor Gwenno Ffrancon, Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor for Welsh Language, Heritage and Culture at Swansea University, said:
"With us being an organisation that has supported the Eisteddfod through our sponsorship and our activities at the GwyddonLe for almost fifteen years, having the Eisteddfod on our doorstep in Margam this year has led to great excitement and a flurry of preparation by the staff and students at Swansea University. All this will surely translate into a week to remember on the Maes with the GwyddonLe full of inspiring activities for our young people, our staff judging competitions and contributing to activities and stalls all over the Eisteddfod field, and our students competing enthusiastically on the stages. It promises to be a special week to celebrate the richness of our Welsh culture but also to showcase this special region of Wales at its best."
