Later this week I’ll be making my way to Cardiff to enjoy the Easter Break with my family. But there will be a little light business mixed with pleasure – Hannah Waldram at Guardian Cardiff has very kindly arranged a very informal blogger’s meet on the Wednesday evening. I’m hoping to chat with some of the people behind the great sites that are emerging in Cardiff, such as Llandaff News, Roath Cardiff and Dan Green’s Big Little City.
There’s exciting things happening in Cardiff at the moment, with the local Guardian Cardiff gaining momentum and some brilliant grass roots hyperlocal sites looking forward to finding their place within UTV’s plans for Wales Live, the Independently Funded News Consortia’s preferred bidder for providing local news. I’m really looking forward to talking with some local active types about their hopes and plans for what’s next! If you’re around Cardiff way this Wednesday 31 March, please pop by Y Fuwch Goch between 6pm and 8pm, it would be great to meet and talk over a drink or three.
There will be no lie-in for me on Easter Sunday, as I’ll be up insanely early snapping away for the 4am Project (countdown clock above). I’ve found Karen Strunks’ 4am Project ‘to gather a collection of photos from around the world at the magical time of 4am’ is a great way of capturing a local area at an unusual, largely unseen time. It can make for some lovely creative content on a community website and I’d recommend it to any hyperlocal publisher with the stomach for an early start and the chill of a dark morning in early spring! It can be especially fun to drag others out of bed too and make a group outing of it like I did in Kington in December. The promise of a hearty breakfast at the end may well swing the balance.
I myself will be in Caerphilly on the estate where I grew up and I’m intrigued to know what old memories and new discoveries wandering my childhood playground at the crack of dawn will bring up. Time will tell. Although Caerphilly is not in Cardiff (there’s the no-small matter of Caerphilly Mountain separating the two) Hannah’s advised me it’s near enough to get away with tagging the photos ’4amcardiff’ in Flickr so they appear in the Guardian Cardiff’s 4am Project slideshow, so I’m glad I’m able to contribute to their local picture of 4am.
