Newyddion i Bawb: making sense of our world, together

Photo Credit: Lilia Strojec

The fundamental business model of journalism has collapsed, trust in news is waning and people feel overwhelmed by conflicting information and misinformation. At the same time, AI is redrawing the information environment: people increasingly ask an AI assistant rather than seek out news themselves. The usual response is to ask “How do we get more journalism to more people?”

Newyddion i Bawb (News for All) started from a different, and more important, question: what do our people and communities actually need to make sense of their lives together?

Building on our News for All research in Grangetown, we spent a year working with people in Blaenau Ffestiniog, alongside local partners CellB and Y Dref Werdd, as well as Common/Wealth, PDR, Inclusive Journalism Cymru, S4C and Creative Wales. Across a series of creatively facilitated research weekends and events, community members explored that question together, and provided their own answers.

The work was made possible by the AHRC Creative Communities programme Community Innovation Practitioner Awards, which which examine the role of culture and devolution in unlocking cross-sector co-creation and place-based innovation across all four nations of the UK.

What we found

• The problem isn’t too little information, it’s too much. Participants aren’t disengaged from public life. They’re overwhelmed by the volume of news, and unsure what to trust.
• What’s missing is space to make sense of it together. People want trusted, in-person places to work through information collectively. Blaenau’s own sesiynau caban, the cabin sessions of the slate mines, offer a blueprint that’s already written into the landscape.
• How we come together matters. Creative facilitation made a crucial difference, moving beyond focus groups or surveys. Participants described feeling “heard, cared for, respected, not forced.”
• Connection strengthens civic life. Almost all participants said they felt more willing and more able to take part in civic and democratic activity as a result of being part of the work. This echoes what we found in Grangetown.
• In an AI-mediated world, relationships matter more, not less. As AI systems increasingly decide what people see, trusted human relationships in place are what those systems can’t replicate, and the one place journalism can still reliably land.

What we’re asking for

Our policy paper sets out three recommendations for Welsh Government:

• Build a funded strand for community-led innovation into the founding remit of the new Shadow Broadcasting Authority. Funding should be open to communities themselves, not just newsrooms, and assessed on how it contributes to social cohesion and democratic participation.
• Use Wales’s consultative role in BBC Charter Renewal to argue that any future settlement should be judged by whether it helps people make sense of the world together. It should also tackle growing dependence on platforms and AI systems, and invest in the community relationships that public service media will increasingly depend on.
• Recognise community sense-making as part of the Foundational Economy, with long-term funding for place-based, participatory, bilingual civic infrastructure, both online and in person.

Hear it in their own words

Our podcast brings together the voices behind the project: community members from Blaenau Ffestiniog, the facilitation team who designed and ran the sessions, and Geraint Evans, Chief Executive of S4C, reflecting on what the work means for public service media in Wales.

Read the case study   Read the policy paper   Listen to the podcast