I can’t wait until Natalia gets back from the 10-day intensive course - to see what she says - in Welsh of course.
That started me thinking about her - on an intensive course learning Welsh through what must be, at least, her 3rd language (Catalan, Spanish, English,…)! And then I thought, have you considered doing SSi English from other languages (Catalan, Breton, Spanish, Thai, etc, etc …)?
I follow your channel and I’m very impressed.
Yup, coming up as soon as the SSiBorg is behaving itself properly…
And Natalia’s doing superbly… 
No need to speak English to her ever again. Seriously.
Diolch Roger - very much appreciated 
Sneak preview - I’ve had some great conversations in Welsh with Natalia. No need at all for her to go back into English now
Dim problem! Croeso.
@aran - If you’re planning to do a French course, I’d be willing to test for you. I majored in French in uni. It’s a bit rusty, now, but certainly up to testing a beginners’ course if you need the help. PM me if/when you need me.
I’m sorry, but when I read about this, the idea of contsts feels really icky to me; it’s essentially the same as spec work. (Later on in the thread, someone mentioned asking students to do things like that “because it would look great in their portfolio”.)
But… why is spec work OK for creative works when we wouldn’t think of paying like this for other services? Did you ask six builders to come and each build you a chalet, and say that you would give a prize (= pay) the one who built the best one? When you want to buy some chocolate for a friend, do you ask various companies to send you free samples and you promise to pay the one you end up giving to your friend?
(The site is mostly about spec design work rather than writing, but I think the ideas are similar. The video linked from the right sidebar is a parody of applying the principle to other jobs such picture frames, restaurants, or gym training.)
Portfolios and recognition don’t feed people, and as you said, there are not many paid gigs out there… meaning that many are tempted to provide free work just on the off chance of follow-up paid work. But it doesn’t sound so great to me.
I’d be fine with SSiW commissioning media content: saying “create a short story in Welsh for me and I will pay you £amount”.
But saying, “submit short stories in Welsh to me and the best one will win £amount; all the others will have produced their creative work entirely for free, but think of the recognition and how great it will look in your portfolio! Or better luck next month when you might be the lucky winner and someone else gets to spend a couple of hours for nothing but “recognition”!” sounds icky to me. Sorry.
Just one person’s opinion and you’re free to ignore it, of course.
Yes it isn’t like Eisteddfod entry where everyone keeps their copyright and can publish if a publisher is interested, at least, so I understand! Or is it? Or nowadays is publishing oneself online the thng and how can that lead to being paid? Back when, amateurs published Trek fiction with no oblection from copyright holders, who were mentioned as holding the rights. Some in USA got taken up professionally!
It’s a fair point, I’m grateful to you for making it, and I sympathise with it to a certain extent.
I also think there are some complexities - for Welsh in particular, and for creativity in general.
As far as Welsh goes, there is a serious lack of funding for a whole range of types of content - with the result that there are very, very few Welsh creatives who are able to work full time on their main strength. Meinir Gwilym, for example, isn’t paid as much as she deserves for her music, and has to work in television - Manon Steffan Ros isn’t paid as much as she deserves for her books, and has to produce a range of other kinds of writings - and so it goes on.
One result of this is that we tend not to have as much new creative work in Welsh as in languages with larger markets - and this in turn means that we don’t do as well in terms of normalising Welsh language media. The vast majority of Welsh speakers do not consistently read books or magazines in Welsh (and books are probably the best funded sector of all, apart from television).
In this difficult context, what is the single most successful generator of writing in Welsh? Yes, the National Eisteddfod, of course.
Do you feel that the National Eisteddfod is ‘icky’?
If you don’t, your emotions about this might be more complicated than just ‘competitions take advantage of creatives’.
In this context, it looks possible that a range of prizes would help trigger more creative activity in Welsh, which could in due course lead to an increase in the amount of people consuming media in Welsh - and increasing the market might help more people make at least part of their living from it. It’s not a given, but it’s not impossible either.
Now, creativity in general.
The drive towards spec work is in many ways a part of the whole gig economy, which has all sorts of problems - I’m not sure there’s all that much difference between spec work and having your prices brutally driven down to commodity level if you’re trying to survive as a taxi driver, for example.
There’s an interesting variable in here, though - the extent to which something depends on personal taste.
If I get a taxi from A to B, I either arrive safely or I don’t. Barring dramatically bad driving (in which case I might well demand to stop and refuse to pay) I’m not going to be disappointed by the results. I have an aim in mind (reaching B) and I achieve it.
But creative works we don’t like rapidly approach zero in value.
If I read a short story and find it uninteresting, I don’t get to the end and think ‘Oh, well, at least I spent some time reading.’ In fact, I’ll actively begrudge the time I spent reading it, as I did with a not-very-good book I read recently (despite having loved a previous series by the same author).
I think that is what leads, in general, to creatives needing to put at least some of their work out there.
Also, I’m not sure you’re right that ‘portfolios and recognition don’t feed people’.
Everybody needs some element of portfolio/recognition.
No, I wouldn’t have considered a prize for the chalet - but if I’d been able to commission a build for it, I would have wanted to see design options in advance of purchase. If I go to a restaurant, I want an idea of what I’m ordering before I order it. If I’m choosing picture frames or a gym, I want to know what my options are (none of which is cost-free to provide - at a minimum, the cost is the time taken to describe or photograph, but it rapidly scales into a whole range of marketing activities).
I think there’s a case to be made for seeing portfolio work as part of the marketing cycle for a creative.
This project, after all, only exists because enough people liked a free Welsh course enough to be willing to pay for more material…
P.S. It’s not just creatives who have prizes to aim for, either - look at the XPrizes, which have done and are doing a huge amount of good for humanity: https://www.xprize.org/
Broadly speaking, it seems fair to suggest that prizes encourage activity in a direction in which the person or team were already interested. XPrize contenders clearly find the process of competing a valuable challenge in and of itself - in a not dissimilar way, I think many of the people who compete to win a short story prize will be refining their craft and getting extra readers even if they don’t win…
I thought about the Eisteddfod a little after writing my post, actually, to try to figure out where I stand.
I don’t feel that the Eisteddfod contests are “icky”.
When I tried to work out why I had the reaction I did to the original post – I’m not sure whether it’s always possible to pinpoint the source of a gut feeling, but I think two things might have come into play:
1 - the Eisteddfod is essentially a one-time thing. Well, once a year, so regular in that sense, but not monthly.
2 - the focus of the Eisteddfod competitions is to reward and perhaps showcase effort, while the focus of this post seems to be to produce content. The “output”, if you will, of the Eisteddfod is the competition ceremony, while the “output” of this contest is the creative work itself, or so it felt to me.
Those are good points as well.
I should probably do a bit more thinking; it’s clearly not a simple black-and-white thing.
Thank you for listening and for your reply.
I can see that making a difference if your feeling is ‘The Eisteddfod is kind of taking advantage, but at least it only happens once a year’.
Less so if your feeling is ‘The Eisteddfod is a legitimate platform which actually helps to generate more Welsh writing and increase the market’ - because in that case, we’d want it to happen more, wouldn’t we?
That’s interesting.
I’d suggest that the ceremony is an easily visible part of the output (relevant, of course, only for the winners) - but you also have the winning works (and others) published and on sale on the Maes, while the ceremonies themselves are driving ticket sales, so more than just a reward…
Maybe part of this is a status thing? Of course winning the Eisteddfod is important, and the Booker Prize, and so on - but not winning a prize from little old SSiW…
And that’s legitimate.
But all prizes or competitions start somewhere - and if we can become one of the main generators of new short stories in Welsh, then I think there will in due course be added status for our winners…
That’s something that I wasn’t really aware of – I suppose I always thought about it like, say, a dance or harp-playing competition: ten groups show up on the stage and perform before an audience, and at the end, the jury awards one of them the prize.
The audience gets to watch/listen to a variety of things, hopefully of reasonably good standard if the participants thought it would be worth entering, and the winner gets lots of fame and recognition, and people might remember their names.
Then everyone goes home.
I hadn’t thought about the “work” surviving the end of the competition – unlike a dance performance, a novel will continue to exist even afterwards and can be sold, either in direct connection with the ceremony, or even later (“Excuse me, Mr Palas Print, do you have that novel that won the Eisteddfod competition this year?”).
Yes, exactly. And Eisteddfod week itself is the comfortable high water mark for sales of books in Welsh…
Actually, only the very best (usually 3) get to perform before an audience - the rest fall by the wayside in the prelims - which is why you’ll hear people talking about someone they know who ‘wedi cael llwyfan’…
Hi I was just browsing and reading this when I remembered I did the old “get by in Italian” BBC course. Eight weeks of 2 hour lessons and we could go into shops and restaurants and ask for things and ask for directions (and understand the answer!). I think ‘holiday’ courses like this should have a good market and a way into the SSiW method.
My comment was totally based on surviving content, as dance, song etc. is a whole different ball game! I would point out that the Booker prize is for already published material, so is quite different. I don’t think the real difference is between annual Eisetddfoau and a monthly, weekly or even daily prize. The folk making money out of the publication are the publisher, printer and author, not the Eisteddfod running the competition. The latter provides publicity for the author which results in publication. The Eisteddfod is not a professional orgabisation, run for profit. Volunteers run it, run events to finance it, work very hard to make it a success, all for love. I presume some folk get expenses, but I’m not sure of that.
Oh, @aran, if your taxi driver took you on the scenic route to ramp up the fare, you might have sussed out the route a bit in advance, but be pretty much stuck with him/her as getting out with luggage in, say, Paris or Roma is rather dodgy. You can refuse to tip, but you are still stuck with paying the fare. The city is the sufferer… reputation-wise!