Local Projects
The Dialogue Centre works in partnership and facilitates others to address local challenges and opportunities.
The projects are rooted in place and contribute to the University Strategy of changing lives for the better by growing knowledge, building communities, and strengthening Wales.
Learn more about our local project areas below.
What are we trying to achieve?
Dinas Llên is an opportunity to use Aberystwyth’s identity as a UNESCO City of Literature to create positive change across our region.
It brings together literature, language and creativity with some of the big questions facing our communities, from the environment and wellbeing to language, tourism and belonging. For University staff, it creates opportunities to try new ideas, work with new partners and turn research, expertise and creativity into activity with real local impact.
As a UNESCO City of Literature, Aberystwyth must show how literature and creativity contribute to the social and economic development of the area. To maintain the designation, we must demonstrate how being a City of Literature leads to growth over time. All projects must progress at least one of the following themes:
Reading Landscapes
Aim: Harness culture, language and literature to help us understand, bear witness and increase community resilience in a period of environmental crisis.
Reading Landscapes is based on the understanding that environmental challenges are not only scientific or technical issues, but social and cultural ones. This theme explores how literature, creativity and storytelling can help people make sense of changing environments and strengthen relationships with place. The long-term change ambition of this pillar of Dinas Llên’s work is to build greater community understanding, connection and resilience by creating new ways for people to engage with landscapes, environmental knowledge and shared futures.
Everyday Words and Stories
Aim: Ensure literature enriches everyone’s life throughout the City.
Everyday Words and Stories is based on the belief that literature and creativity can contribute to wellbeing, connection and belonging when they become part of everyday life. This theme seeks to democratise literature by creating joyful and meaningful encounters with stories and language in everyday settings. The long-term ambition of this theme is to strengthen community cohesion, reduce barriers to participation and create a culture where more people see literature and creativity as relevant to their own lives.
Opening Books
Aim: Help reverse a UK decline in love of books and reading, and develop literacy for educational attainment and wellbeing.
Opening Books focuses on building a stronger culture of reading within the City area and helping more people develop lifelong relationships with books and stories. It seeks to broaden participation, support literacy and wellbeing, and create opportunities for children, families and communities to engage with writing and reading in meaningful and lasting ways.
Literary Bridges
Aim: Connect endangered languages to build resilience for sustainable linguistic diversity across the world.
Literary Bridges is based on the understanding that languages carry culture, identity and ways of understanding the world. This theme recognises that strengthening linguistic diversity requires meaningful exchange and relationships between communities. The long-term change ambition of this theme is to build resilience for minoritised and multilingual cultures by creating opportunities for connection, exchange and collaboration between writers, communities and places across the UNESCO network and beyond.
Literary Beacons
Aim: Use our distinct literary heritage to help develop a sustainable tourism model that regenerates communities, language, culture and environment.
Literary Beacons is based on the belief that literature and cultural heritage can act as catalysts for wider social, cultural and economic development. This theme seeks to strengthen places as centres of creativity and connection, using literary identity to support vibrant communities and sustainable cultural tourism. The long-term ambition here is to create a network of literary and cultural destinations that strengthen local pride, generate opportunity and contribute to resilient places and economies.
Positive Peace
Aim: Strengthen Wales’ reputation and standing as a Nation of Sanctuary.
Positive Peace is based on the understanding that peace is built through relationships, dialogue and shared understanding rather than simply the absence of conflict. This theme explores how literature, storytelling and creativity can create opportunities for empathy, connection and bridge-building across communities and cultures. The long-term change ambition of this theme is to strengthen cultures of peace, inclusion and belonging locally and internationally through creative approaches that support understanding and reconciliation.
Aberystwyth University Project Proposals
Dinas Llên welcomes ideas from staff for activities and projects. Instead of asking for a finished proposal, we work with you to develop your idea. This helps connect people working on similar themes, build stronger partnerships and improve projects before funding decisions are made.
The process also gives us space to test new ideas and learn from what we do.
1. Share your idea and book a conversation
Complete the short form to tell us about your idea and book a 30-minute conversation.
Your idea does not need to be fully developed.
Share your idea and book a conversation
2. Talk it through
You will have an informal discussion with one member of the Dinas Llên and local civic contributions leadership team. The team consists of the Chair, Matthew Jarvis, Deputy Chair, Dr Hywel Griffiths, Dialogue Centre Lead, Dr Jen Wolowic.
This is a development conversation, not an approval meeting.
We will discuss and provide feedback on:
- what you want to do
- how it supports a Dinas Llên theme
- its potential civic impact
- partners and collaborators
- opportunities for support or funding
3. Develop your idea
Use the conversation to develop your project and involve relevant partners or participants.
Then complete the Project Concept Template.
Download the Project Concept Template
4. Submit for review
Submit your Project Concept Template by the next quarterly deadline.
Include:
- project aim and Dinas Llên theme
- partners and collaborators
- how others helped shape the project
- intended outcomes
- budget and timeline
Projects are reviewed for alignment, collaboration, impact, learning, evaluation, feasibility and potential future funding.
2026/27 deadlines:
- 20 October, 2026
- 5 January 2027
- 1 April 2027
- 30 July 2027
5. Receive a recommendation
Your project may be:
- funded or partly funded
- funded with changes
- returned for further development
- connected with other activity or partners
- referred to the wider Dinas Llên partnership
- held for the next funding round
6. Deliver your project
Once approved, you project will be reviewed by the Dinas Llên partnership for branding permissions, and you will receive Dinas Llên guidance, branding and evaluation information.
Project leads will attend regular project updates, share progress and work with the Dialogue Centre on evaluation.
What are we trying to achieve?
Growing Aberystwyth recognises that thriving communities are strengthened when people have reliable access to healthy food, opportunities to develop practical skills, and greater resilience in the face of economic and environmental change. This theme seeks to strengthen local food security by supporting food growing, skills development, knowledge sharing, and community participation, while exploring how underused University and community assets can create new opportunities for local food production, learning, and sustainability. The long-term ambition is to strengthen a more food-secure and resilient Aberystwyth by creating opportunities for collaboration, participation, innovation, and environmental stewardship, helping establish stronger local food systems that contribute to community wellbeing, sustainability, and regional resilience.
Maes Dysgu Aber Learning Field
What happens when you mix history, food growing, biodiversity, wellbeing and a community willing to get its hands dirty?
In 2026, Aberystwyth University and Eco Hub Aber launched a new collaboration at Maes Dysgu Aber Learning Field. The project brings community allotments, sustainable growing activities and new ways for local people to get involved in growing food, learning and spending time outdoors.
The partnership builds on a site many local people may not know already exists. Just over four years ago, staff from the Department of History and Welsh History created a ‘Dig for Victory’ garden inspired by World War II gardening guides and community growing campaigns.
Since then, the site has continued to grow. It now regularly hosts more than 30 students at a time and includes several unique growing spaces.
Alongside the Penglais Heritage Fruit and Nut Orchard, visitors can find a student managed Three Sisters Bed inspired by Indigenous Mesoamerican growing methods and the Aber Medieval Physic Garden, which explores medicinal plants and foods used during the Middle Ages.
Together these spaces demonstrate a shared story: across time and cultures, urban communities have always found ways to grow food close to home, share knowledge and support one another.
Now Eco Hub is helping continue that story in Aberystwyth by setting up additional community allotments, expanded composting and sustainable growing methods to the Learning Field.
Plans also include improved composting systems, a composting toilet, and polytunnel, demonstrating practical approaches to lower impact living and food production.
Eco Hub’s activity on the field is supported through funding from Ceredigion County Council and the Ceredigion Food Partnership and Keep Wales Tidy.
These new additions will sit alongside the site’s historical growing learning spaces and connect lessons from the past with how people grow food today.
What are we trying to achieve?
An Inclusive Aberystwyth recognises that thriving communities are strengthened through belonging, visibility and meaningful relationships across difference. This theme seeks to celebrate the diversity of Aberystwyth’s bilingual Welsh, LGBTQ+, international and wider community identities while creating opportunities for connection and shared experiences. The long-term ambition is to strengthen a confident and welcoming civic culture where diversity is recognised as a strength and where people experience Aberystwyth as a vibrant, inclusive and globally connected place.