Putting on a show

IF you grew up in the Valleys any time over the past 30 or so years, you’ll be used to the labels.

Deprived. Run-down. Devoid of hope. Back of beyond.

We’re used to the tags and yes, there may be an element of truth in some of them. No-one can deny that our communities have suffered. But the claims are exaggerated and out-of-date.

Here in the Valleys, we know that those descriptions which haunt us are certainly not the whole truth. Valleys communities are close-knit, proud and heritage-rich. They have plenty of good things going on, and plenty of positive stories to shout about.

That’s why I think 3VTV, our new internet television channel for Blaenau Gwent, will be a success.

Launched last week (Jan 31), 3VTV broadcasts films exclusively about Blaenau Gwent. Run by a team from the University of Wales, Newport, the channel is a pilot in local broadcasting – and as we have chosen one of the smallest Welsh county boroughs as our home, with a population of fewer than 70,000, this really is TV on a “micro” scale.

We aim to be a platform for the community to champion itself, a vehicle to tell those gems of stories which are all around us here, and a means to put Blaenau Gwent on the map for all the right reasons.

On the channel right now you can watch a documentary about 91-year-old Josephine Williams, one of the first women to work at Ebbw Vale Steelworks during World War II, when the male workforce was depleted by the conflict. In future weeks we’ll have a film exploring the history of the Jewish community in Brynmawr, presented by local actor Oliver Wood, and another about a local binman who pens poetry in his spare time.

Would these stories – and the myriad others we’ll be bringing you in the weeks and months ahead – be told if 3VTV hadn’t been born? Possibly, but for many of them, probably not. Some are too “local” for many of the bigger media players; for some we have an advantage in unearthing them because, unlike many media organisations, we’re lucky enough to be truly local – our office is in Tredegar.

We are proud to be television made in Blaenau Gwent, for Blaenau Gwent, and we want the community to get involved. We have a team of professional film-makers making content for the channel, but we’re also showing films made by the community themselves. You can see some of these already by logging on to 3vtv.co.uk and clicking on Films By You.  We are building up a team of local correspondents – teenagers who are taking on a town each and will be filming regular reports for us from their patch. And we’re encouraging people who don’t want to make films themselves but may have a great idea for content to contact us and tell us want they want us to make and what they want to watch.

3VTV also aims to help the local economy. We are working with small-to-medium sized enterprises in Blaenau Gwent who have never before used video to market themselves, making them professional promotional films which are then shown on the channel – all free of charge. So Blaenau Gwent residents logging on to 3VTV get to see entertaining little films all about the hairdresser, coffee shop, boutique and so on which are right on their doorstep. And as the channel is broadcast on the internet, we hope to bring these businesses to the attention of a potential new customer base further afield as well.

All this is possible thanks to the tremendous support we’ve already experienced from the community and businesses of Blaenau Gwent, from the University of Wales, Newport, and thanks to the backing of the Welsh Government, who are part-funding the channel to the tune of £450,000 over three years.

We are hopeful that we will make 3VTV a roaring success and, at the end of our funding, we will be in a position to sustain the project and keep the channel going in Blaenau Gwent. More than that, we aim to create a thriving model with tangible results which we can roll out in other county boroughs across Wales.

See 3VTV at 3vtv.co.uk and follow us on Twitter: @3VTV