On Friday February 2nd, the Media Office at Cardiff University’s Student Union was far busier than usual. The editorial team of Gair Rhydd, the beloved publication you’re currently holding in your hand, was blessed with a surprise visit from a fellow Welsh student newspaper team all the way up north in Aberystwyth: Mouth of the Ystwyth. They were lovely enough to reach out to us a few weeks prior to propose a meetup in the hope of fostering a relationship between our universities’ student orgs.
The exchange began with our benevolent dictator and editor-inchief Edward Sutton, accompanied by two of his most loyal Gair Rhydd minions, rendezvousing with our Aberystwyth analogs outside BBC Cymru Wales for a Cardiff -centric experience. By all accounts, the visit to the BBC was a huge success, with a chance to see impressive media sets, production tech like enormous cameras, and a lot to learn about the inner workings of Wales’ media landscape. It also yielded an immaculate video of our Supreme Leader Edward Sutton giving a weather reading on set, a pleasure privy only to the Gair Rhydd inner circle. From what I could tell, everyone got along splendidly and had a wonderful time.
After an unfortunate failed attempt at visiting Cardiff University’s building for the School of Journalism, Media and Culture, we moved on to our workshops. The Mouth of the Yswyth’s president, the wonderful Hope Whiteheath, delivered a passionate and engaging workshop on her love of stand-up comedy criticism—a type of writing that I, even as a review editor, was completely ignorant of how to approach, having never considered the nuances of this niche. I may have to try one out in a future edition of this paper. Afterwards, Supreme Leader Ed led a brainstorming workshop about how to improve our workflow and where to go creatively with Gair Rhydd, taking on advice from The Mouth of the Ystwyth about their process.
Having checked off our nerdy cultural and journalistic obligations, the evening was spent getting the true, authentic Cardiff experience: a social getting sloshed at The Vulcan and a night out in Misfits Social Club. What better a representation of our divine city than that? I hope that I can speak on behalf of everyone that attended when I say that it was a great time and that I hope to see them again sometime in the future. May this exchange be the start of a healthy inter-university dialogue between our newspapers.
If you’d like to check out some of Mouth of the Ystwyth’s online journalism, head to https://dbiw.co.uk/ wordpress/ to see their slick website (which puts our online pres-