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Advisory Group

In addition to the five major partners who form the management group for the project is a broad-ranging Advisory Group comprising representatives from the Welsh Assembly Government, City and County of Swansea, art and culture organisations, local history groups and colleagues from other departments within Swansea University.

Advisory Group Report, 6 December 2010

Has a more diverse group of people with a common interest in copper ever met like this before? We don't think so. Yesterday the Copper Project's Advisory Group met for the first time since the project's official start. Swansea University's SURF (Swansea University Research Forum) Room in Fulton House welcomed a genuinely broad range of people representing organisations and groups from across Wales, from Welsh Assembly Government and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Wales to Swansea Community Boat Trust and Treboeth History Group. A materials scientist and a poet, an engineer and press officer joined heritage professionals, historians and others to hear more about how far we have come with the Copper Project since its start in September 2010.

Following brief introductions by everyone who attended, Prof. Huw Bowen, leading the project, reminded us of the original aims of the project. Even though many things have spun out of the initiatives undertaken so far, for example Copper Day on 5 March 2011, we felt it was important to stick as far as possible to the original brief. The 'Global and Local Worlds of Welsh Copper' means:

• Raising awareness of the historic world copper industry and Wales’ role in it
• A local focus on the domination of south Welsh smelting, and its nexus in Swansea
• Creating a network to connect Wales with the rest of the world through a shared copper heritage.

These strands were reiterated by Dr. Tehmina Goskar, Research Officer on the project, in a presentation which outlined the main areas of progress. Highlighted areas included:

• Institute of Welsh Affairs symposium on History, Heritage and Urban Regeneration, 14 October 2010
• Basic Copper Project web pages on Swansea University's Research Institute for Arts and Humanities site
• Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/copperhistories
• Tawe River Navigation Heritage Trail on Google Earth (KML file will be made available next year)
• Media and Communication Studies students involved in making short video productions 
• Global copper narrative takes shape: a done—a bird’s eye view of the world copper from a Welsh perspective during the 18th to 20th centuries and its human face
• Selection of digital collections from Richard Burton Archives and RCAHMW (project partners)
• Framework for 3d animations of Swansea's international copper landscape (co-ordinated by RCAHMW--see a 3D model of the 1910 Musgrave Engine House)
• DRAFT Copper Project Bilingual Flyer  (A4, PDF format, English/Cymraeg)
• Building the copper network of people and organisations wanting to be involved.