#townhill — Public Fediverse posts

TOWNHILL: ‘A beacon of what good community work looks like’ — the Phoenix Centre at 25, through the eyes of one of its own

For 25 years, the Phoenix Centre has sat at the heart of Townhill — a community hub that has weathered the estate’s hardest moments and quietly shaped countless lives.

As the centre marks its anniversary, few people embody its story better than Zoe Murphy: born and raised on the hill, a University of Wales Trinity Saint David graduate, and now a project coordinator at the very centre she first walked into as a young dance teacher.

Run by the Hill Community Development Trust, the Phoenix is a social enterprise that ploughs any profit back into the community. It was set up to tackle poverty and drive regeneration on one of Wales’s first purpose-built council estates.

For Murphy, it has been a thread running through her whole adult life.

She became a mother at 18 but never let go of her ambition to go to university — and found her chance close to home, at what was then the Swansea Institute of Higher Education, now UWTSD, which had a campus in Townhill at the time.

“I was very academic, so going to university was always part of the plan — it was just about finding a way to make it work,” she said. “With a campus based in Townhill at the time, accessing education within my own community made all the difference while raising my daughter.”

She graduated in 2002 with a degree in English Studies, Drama and Media — a course that chimed with her love of storytelling and performance — while already running a successful dance school locally.

She remembers her student years as “one of the happiest times” of her life, and a foundation for the freelance work that still shapes her practice today.

Her career since has never followed a single track. She began in dance — teaching, choreographing and creating dance theatre — before moving into community arts and engagement.

“That’s where I really developed my voice as an artist,” she said.

A city-wide community dance project later reconnected her with UWTSD, leading to six years working in community engagement at the university. She has also worked across schools, children’s residential care, prisons and work-based learning, and in 2018 completed a qualification in Post Compulsory Education and Training.

Her bond with the Phoenix spans much of her life. She used the centre for her dance classes when it first opened, as well as for social activities and community events — so when she joined the organisation in 2025 as a project coordinator, it felt like a natural continuation of a relationship stretching back a quarter of a century.

In her current role she runs the weekly youth club, coordinates community groups and helps develop local events.

“I really believe in the power the centre has,” she said. “It’s in the heart of Townhill, and I see the hard graft it takes to keep it going and its absolute importance to our community.”

For Murphy, the work is personal. She is acutely aware of the negative perceptions that have dogged the area — perceptions she says miss the truth of the place.

“What I’ve experienced growing up and working here is strength, compassion, and a real sense of people looking out for each other,” she said. “There’s a strong identity here, and a pride that people don’t always see from the outside.”

That pride was tested five years ago. In May 2021, Mayhill made national headlines after two hours of violent disorder in which cars were torched and homes attacked, drawing condemnation from the then home secretary and the label “war zone.”

Eighteen people were later jailed for a combined total of more than 83 years, with South Wales Police later apologising for its handling of the night after an independent report. But residents have always pointed to what came next — neighbours pouring out to clear up and support those who had been targeted — as the truer picture of the hill.

In the aftermath, the council announced major investment in the area, covering sport and youth facilities, roads and the environment, and an independent review was set up to support the community.

The Phoenix has remained a constant through it all. The centre features in a new report by the Wales Centre for Public Policy examining poverty stigma in Swansea and the role of local services, and was visited recently by BBC Wales as part of its reporting on life on the estate.

It is far from the centre’s first turn in the spotlight for the right reasons. In 2024 it added a new play area for local children — one of a steady stream of community-led improvements that have made it, in our own past reporting, one of Swansea’s busiest and most vibrant community centres.

Murphy sees the 25th anniversary as a moment to reflect — and a reminder of what the centre has meant to Townhill and neighbouring Mayhill since it opened at a time of real need.

“Spaces like that don’t last 25 years without commitment, and without people believing in what it offers,” she said.

She is clear, too, that the work depends on sustained support.

“Places like the Phoenix Centre show what’s possible when communities are properly resourced,” she said. “It shouldn’t be the exception.”

For her, the centre stands as “a beacon of what good community work looks like, and what can happen when people are given the space and support to make something work.”

Murphy, who also writes, captured the spirit of the estate in a poem composed for the centre’s anniversary. Titled “The Hill Dwellers,” it turns the outside world’s assumptions on their head — closing on a line of defiant belonging.

The Hill Dwellers

by Zoe Murphy

Rows of houses lean into the sky,
weathered like the women who walk beneath them,
strong-backed, sharp-tongued,
kind when it counts.

We live close here.
Close like window to window,
door to door,
life to life.
Somewhere, sprayed on the wall outside No. 14:
“Babe, you look so cool.”
A sentence left hanging,
like laundry, like meaning.

This place is not perfect.
It peels and shouts and forgets itself sometimes.
There’s history in these bricks.
And it’s ours.

A single mum with a house full of noise —
music upstairs, laundry on radiators,
takeaway wrappers and late-night advice
they pretend not to hear.

Graffiti blooms on the bus stop glass,
a whisper in scarlet: “Babe, you look so cool.”
A love letter in a place no one’s meant to look,
proof that someone once felt something
loud enough to scrawl it softly.
Someone needed to say it —
and someone else needed to hear it.

The Hill Dwellers,
holding routines, rain and tea.
From here we see it all —
the backs of buildings,
the weather rolling in.
We carry our lives up these slopes:
shopping bags, heartbreak, school shoes,
bits of gossip tucked in pockets,
a line someone once wrote
still tucked in my head some mornings
when the fog sits low.
We are above, not below.
We belong.
Babe, you look so cool.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

Eighteen people jailed for their part in Mayhill riot
The sentences handed down after the 2021 disorder that made national headlines.

Independent review set up to support Mayhill and Waun Wen after riot
The panel established to help the community recover in the wake of the unrest.

Council leader announces major new investment in Mayhill
Funding for sport, youth facilities, roads and the environment on the estate.

Children thrilled by Townhill’s new play area
A new play space at the Phoenix Centre, one of the city’s busiest community hubs.

TOWNHILL: Family-run convenience store reopens as a SPAR after major revamp

A family-run convenience store in Townhill has been given a new lease of life, reopening its doors as a SPAR after a major revamp.

Local retailer Mandeep Sohal has transformed the shop in partnership with A F Blakemore, the UK’s largest independent SPAR wholesaler — and he was joined by family and staff to mark the occasion outside the newly branded store.

Gone is the old fit-out, replaced by a brighter layout reworked around how local people actually shop, with a noticeably bigger range of fresh, chilled and frozen food on the shelves.

The store has kept the things the community relies on, too. A Post Office counter still operates inside, and a bank of 24/7 parcel lockers sits out front for collections and returns at any hour.

It is the kind of independent shop that does a lot of quiet heavy lifting in a community like Townhill — the place you nip to for a pint of milk, a parcel and your pension, all in one stop.

Mr Sohal said the switch to SPAR had breathed new life into the business.

“The new look and improved offer have given the store a real lift,” he said.

“We’re proud to bring more choice, better value and a much stronger fresh range to the Townhill community, and we’re excited to welcome even more shoppers in.”

He said there was more to come, with the shop preparing to roll out Iceland frozen ranges — part of a wider tie-up that has seen SPAR stores across the UK begin stocking the supermarket’s popular own-brand lines.

A F Blakemore said the changeover had been handled without closing the doors on customers, with its team working alongside the store throughout the conversion.

The wholesaler supplies and supports hundreds of independent retailers across the country, all trading under the familiar green SPAR sign.

For Townhill, it means a long-standing local shop carrying on — just with a lot more on the shelves.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

Townhill: Social housing developer plans 27 affordable homes on derelict nursery site
Plans for 27 affordable homes on a Townhill site empty for more than a decade.

Cwmbwrla: Plans in for 12 flats above the CK Foodstores supermarket
An application to convert empty floors above a nearby supermarket into flats.

SWANSEA: Three arrested in dawn raids targeting organised crime network

Three people have been arrested in Swansea following dawn raids carried out by officers targeting organised crime.

South Wales Police’s organised crime team, supported by specialist officers, executed three warrants this morning as part of the operation.

A 24-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman from Mount Pleasant were among those arrested.

A 49-year-old woman from Townhill was also arrested.

All three remain in police custody.

South Wales Police said tackling organised crime was a priority for the force.

The operation was carried out by the force’s specialist organised crime team, which focuses on disrupting criminal networks across the region.

South Wales Police said: “Dawn raids by the Swansea organised crime team and specialist officers have seen three warrants executed and three people arrested in connection with organised crime.”

The force added it would continue to be “relentless in our pursuit of criminals to protect communities from harm.”

No details have been released about the nature of the organised crime being investigated.

Investigations are ongoing.

Mount Pleasant and Townhill have featured repeatedly in South Wales Police’s organised crime investigations.

A Mount Pleasant man was among four jailed for county lines drug dealing after a vehicle was stopped in Gors Avenue, while a Mount Pleasant woman received a suspended sentence as part of the ‘Scouse Ryan’ county lines operation running drugs between Liverpool and Swansea.

A Mount Pleasant resident was also convicted as an associate of a major south-west Wales drug gang that was found to possess a firearm, cocaine and cannabis.

Anyone with information about organised crime in their area is urged to contact South Wales Police on 101.

Reports can also be made anonymously via Crimestoppers online or by calling 0800 555 111.

If someone is in immediate danger or a crime is taking place, dial 999.