The National Eisteddfod has started a special campaign to encourage local people to join in the Eisteddfod ‘hwyl’ this year, when the festival visits Wrexham from 30 July – 6 August this year.

The campaign ‘Hwyl is fun’  uses a number of easy Welsh phrases to encourage people to come to the Eisteddfod. Targeting 16-45 year olds, living within an hour’s journey of the Maes, organisers hope that the campaign will encourage local people to recognise some of the phrases over the next few months, and will be confident to use them on the Maes during the week.

National Eisteddfod Head of Communications, Gwenllїan Carr, says:

“This is a new campaign, which encourages those living within an hour’s journey of the Eisteddfod to come and visit us during the week. We are keen to appeal to those who do not speak Welsh locally, by using simple and easy phrases to get them to be part of the Eisteddfod ‘hwyl’.

“Images and photos form a big part of the campaign, which presents the Eisteddfod in a vibrant way, and the phrases will also be used in across the whole region over the coming months. We’ll also be using them in the Welcome Pavilion suing the week, to ensure that all our visitors see them and have a chance to use some of these phrases on the Maes.

“Introducing the language to a new audience and encouraging others to use Welsh is an important part of the Eisteddfod’s work, and we hope that this campaign will encourage people across the region to find out more about the language and how to learn Welsh.”

A campaign website will be published over the next few weeks, and posters, leaflets and other materials will be distributed across Blaenau Gwent and the Heads of the Valleys in the period up to the Eisteddfod itself.