USW sponsors local music festival

University of South Wales (USW) is sponsoring the 2024 Reggae & Riddim Festival being held in Newport on 26-28 July.

Urban Circle Newport, award-winning youth arts and advocacy charity, in partnership with Jamaica’s Rastafari indigenous village, bring the reggae festival to Newport for a second time.

In partnership with other local organisations, the sponsorship will fund a School/Community Creative Arts development project. They will engage local young people from Newport primary schools, secondary schools and community groups, in a series of events prior to and during the festival.

The young people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds will have the opportunity to engage in new forms of training and explore avenues and receive training, not only in life skills such as teamwork, team building, self-confidence, responsibility, and professionalism, but also have the opportunity to gain qualifications in dance coaching, youth work, first aid, food hygiene, and more.

Sponsorship of this important event forms part of the University’s Race Equity Journey. In 2021, USW signed up to Advance HE’s Race Equality Charter, which provides a framework through which institutions work to identify and self-reflect on institutional and cultural barriers standing in the way of Black, Asian, and ethnic minority colleagues and students, and implement initiatives and solutions for action to address this.

Zoe Durrant, USW’s Chief People and Inclusion Officer, said: “The Reggae and Riddim festival is an amazing event and we are proud to be a part of it.

“Our vision is to change lives and our world for the better and we can only do this if we aim for equity, diversity, and inclusion - working with partners like Urban Circle Newport is integral to achieving our goals.

“We recently launched our latest Strategic Equality Plan demonstrating our commitment to creating a welcoming and inclusive environment where our students, colleagues, and partners can collaborate, innovate, and flourish.”

Loren Henry, Co-founder of Urban Circle Newport, said: “This project aims to use different forms of creative arts to tackle multiple social problems affecting vulnerable young people in and around Newport community. Music has a very powerful connection and providing the young people with an opportunity to create something of their own will inspire confidence as well as a sense of ownership and identity within their creative field.

“Our goal is to build a long-lasting international project that creates Europe's most authentic Reggae culture festival. Thank you to USW for their continued support.”

You can buy tickets for the festival at reggaeriddimfestival.com.