‘Songwriting instead of doomscrolling’: project inspires Port Talbot to tune into its heritage

Community groups and schools work with Wales’s folk arts organisation to set stories of the area’s people to music

Growing up in Wales, Liz Puleston-Jones was familiar with the country’s rich heritage of storytelling and traditional music, but none of it ever seemed to have much of a connection to her life in Swansea.

Researching the history of the area as part of Cân y Cymoedd (When Valleys Sing), a project in nearby Port Talbot, she came across the story of Isabel Thomas, a 14-year-old girl in the 1940s who left school and lied about her age to work in a tin plate works to support her family.