Author: Rhys Gregory

Olivia Trevelyan Richards is making English Youth Ballet (EYB) history as she is the company’s first young dancer ever to return to the company as a professional principal dancer.  She will be starring as Cinderella in English Youth Ballet’s upcoming production of Cinderella in Hollywood at New Theatre Cardiff. Olivia (22) grew up in Cyn Coed Cardiff, and at the age of 13, she danced with EYB in Cardiff in a production of Giselle.  At this time, she was training at the Mandy & Shirley Morris School of Dance.  She graduated from Central School of Ballet and was offered a…

Pubs across Wales have recently celebrated the graduation of 16 managers from various Stonegate sites across the country, from its internal progression programme Aspirations. The programme provides General Managers at Stonegate venues the opportunity to learn and develop vital skills and behaviours required to become industry leading Area and Regional Managers. Max von Arep, General Manager of Be At One Cardiff is one of the managers to graduate the training and progression scheme. Aspirations is a part of Stonegate Group’s award-winning learning and development programme, Alberts Theory of Progression. Completion of this programme, earmarks graduates for Area and Regional Manager Roles within…

Cardiff-based public relations agency Petersens PR has made a key appointment to help take the business to the next level. The agency has hired experienced practitioner Darren Evans as PR Manager to oversee its client accounts. Darren has worked in PR for seven years in a variety of agency and in-house roles and was previously a journalist for 13 years. He said: “I’ve been working with Rob and the team on a consultancy basis, and I’ve seen the huge potential in the business, so I’m excited to take the next step and become a permanent part of the team. “Although…

The RSPCA has released new figures which reveal seven cats a day suffer at the hands of humans and this is expected to increase during the summer months. Over the last six years (2016-2021), there were 16,212 incidents of deliberate cruelty towards cats reported to the animal welfare charity which equals a staggering seven cats a day suffering at the hands of humans. In 2021 alone, there were 1,387 reports of intentional harm to cats and this peaked during the months of July and August. Overall, there were 17,804 complaints made to the charity regarding cats in 2021 from abandonments,…

Welsh whisky giants Penderyn are set to bring their unique distillery and bottling plant to Swansea as part of a landmark £1 billion transformation program launched by the city council Shaping Swansea is set to rejuvenate up to seven different areas across the city and districts, from the Civic Centre to Sailbridge, Oystermouth Road to Oxford Street. The Hafod-Morfa Copperworks, meanwhile, is set to be the site of a third location for Penderyn – having expanded into Llandudno, North Wales last year. “I speak for all of us at Penderyn when I say how thrilled we are to be making…

A group of pioneering Welsh farms are at the forefront of the drive to increase awareness and stop the spread of antibiotic resistance in animals and the environment. Twelve ‘Proof of Concept’ (PoC) farms have been recruited as an integral part of Arwain DGC, a project created to highlight the issue of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The project helps farmers, equine keepers and vets in Wales reduce the need to use antibiotics through training, technology, data gathering, and intelligence*. Drawn from across Wales, the PoC farms comprise four dairy, four sheep, and four beef farms. They aim to reduce the need…

Leading Welsh cheesemaker and farmer co-op South Caernarfon Creameries has come roaring back from the pandemic with profits of £4.1 million and a massive 17 per cent increase in sales to a record-breaking £71.5 million. The business has boosted turnover and profits in the year to March at the same time as ploughing £3.8 million back into their investment programme Project Dragon, a five-year £20 million plan to boost production at its Chwilog dairy near Pwllheli. That will see cheese production at Wales’s most established and largest farmer-owned dairy co-operative increase from its current 16,000 tons a year to 23,000…

Unpaid carers who could be entitled to a £500 one-off grant but missed last month’s deadline to register for it are being given a second chance. Swansea Council has already paid out £1,676,000 to more than 3,300 unpaid carers. But the Welsh Government has decided to re-open registrations for the grant and it means anyone who’s not yet applied can get their application in by September 2. It is not a new grant and anyone who has already applied does not need to do so again. In Swansea there’s an estimated 950 further unpaid carers who’ve not yet taken the…

Newport City Council – supported by Tyfu Tai Cymru – has been carrying out research into the experience of private landlords that let properties in the city. The aim of the research was to better understand the private rented sector in the city and to identify potential policy interventions the local authority could make to support the private rented sector. In the 2011 census, 8,572 households lived in the private rented sector in Newport, 14% of all households. Data obtained from Rent Smart Wales in 2020 showed that there were 10,551 private rented properties in Newport owned by over 5,000…

A number of town centre roads will be closed during the daytime this Thursday (18 August) for the Pontmorlais Townscape ‘Heritage Victorian Day’. Between 6am and 4:30pm, there will be closures to: Pontmorlais High street – traffic will be diverted right at Lloyds Bank onto Church Street Tramroad Side North Castle Street Arranged by the Council in partnership with the Big Heart of Merthyr Tydfil BID, the event, running from 11am-3pm, has been designed to give visitors a glimpse into what the town centre might have looked like nearly 200 years ago. Traders and staff will be dressed in traditional…