Llangollen and UNESCO Cymru Wales collaboration: "wholly natural" and "hugely positive" - Mervyn Cousins

The Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod will, this year, benefit from a funding package through a unique and groundbreaking collaboration with UNESCO Cymru-Wales and the Welsh Assembly Government. The £15,000 award will provide funding for three projects central to the Eisteddfod as well as an exciting collaboration with the Smithsonian Festival in Washington DC.

This natural partnership reflects Llangollen’s commitment to education, outreach and cooperation between nations. It is an extremely positive development for the festival, as Executive Director, Mervyn Cousins explains: "We are enormously grateful to UNESCO Cymru-Wales for their significant financial contribution to this year's event, not least because the festival - like any other of its kind - is in particular need of support during this difficult economic time."

The UNESCO Cymru-Wales partnership will provide funding for four distinct projects:

They will donate the prize monies for the Choir of the World competition, whose winners receive the famous and much sought-after Pavarotti Trophy.

Etran Finatawa, a unique group from the Sahara desert will receive sponsorship in order to attend the festival and work with 8000 school children over three days as well as perform for all the visitors in the "World Music @SIX" concert series.

UNESCO Cymru-Wales will also be assisting Llangollen with the establishment of "Llangollen Eisteddfod Ambassadors", who will be chosen to help in extending the profile of Wales’ premier international event even further - and its mission of building peace and harmony through the international language of music - both in the UK and overseas.

Furthermore, the grant funding from the Welsh Assembly through UNESCO Cymru-Wales will also assist Llangollen in attending the Smithsonian Festival in Washington D.C. as ambassadors from Wales and its major musical and artistic events. As the featured nation at the 2009 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which takes place annually on the National Mall
in Washington and welcomes over one million visitors from the whole of the USA and the rest of the world, Wales will have an opportunity to show what it has to offer on a world stage.

With so many parallels between Llangollen and UNESCO's ideals, Executive Director, Mervyn Cousins expresses his enthusiasm for this new partnership: "This is an enormously exciting link-up, both for this year specifically, and for the possibilities to work together on even more far-reaching projects in the future. The aims and objectives of the International
Eisteddfod of education, outreach and international cooperation are so parallel to those of UNESCO, that it seems wholly natural as well as hugely positive to work together."

A UNESCO Cymru-Wales spokesperson said: "To be involved with Llangollen and all the wonderful work that the festival does in bringing the nations and people of Wales and the world together through fabulous performance and a unique Welsh welcome is a really exciting opportunity for us. We are pleased to be supporting innovative new ventures within the event, and we are also well aware of the great profile that Llangollen's Choir of the World competition has throughout Wales and all over the world. We are looking forward also to taking in first hand that tangible feeling of togetherness that the International Eisteddfod has in the Pavilion, on the Field, and in the town of Llangollen. We sincerely hope that the relationship between the two organisations will now develop into further groundbreaking activity in the future".

Organisers of the festival are also hoping that a leading member from UNESCO's European base to Llangollen will visit the festival and join Llangollen's President, Terry Waite CBE, in presenting the Choir of the World Pavarotti Trophy.