Cyfrwng Award 2006: Gwyn Thomas
The recipient of the Cyfrwng Award 2006 is the Emeritus Professor Gwyn Thomas, Bangor, honoured in the year of his 70th birthday. Gwyn Thomas is a poet, writer and highly respected academic who has contributed extensively to the media and visual arts in Wales.
The important contribution made by Gwyn Thomas, originally from Blaenau Ffestiniog, to the media is clear to see in several fields over the decades. He, for example, was responsible for adapting the Mabinogi for an animated film released by S4C in 2002 with Ioan Gruffudd and Matthew Rhys. He was also active with the Welsh Film Board, working with the director William Aaron on the first Welsh horror film in 1981 O’r Ddaear Hen. He also experimented with poems for television and radio and published a volume of them in 1976 under the title Cadwynau yn y Meddwl. And from the point of view of theorizing, he has cultivated the ideology of llunyddiaeth – the relationship between the image and the word in film, television and on the stage.
The award was presented by Dr. William R. Lewis, dramatist and television scriptwriter who is also a lecturer at the University of Wales, Bangor, following his lecture on the work of Gwyn Thomas during the Cyfrwng 2006 Conference. In his lecture Dr. Lewis concentrated on Gwyn Thomas’ theorizing on the nature and significance of the media from the perspective of the prosperity and continuation of the Welsh Language and culture.
A celebration dinner followed in Le Vignoble restaurant, Aberystwyth.
