#uwtsd — Public Fediverse posts

MOUNT PLEASANT: Inside Swansea’s abandoned Technical College — the building time forgot

Behind the locked doors of one of Swansea’s most familiar buildings, the clocks stopped in 2018.

The former University of Wales Trinity Saint David campus at Mount Pleasant — built as the Swansea Technical College — has stood largely empty since the university moved out, and new images by B&R Urban Explorers show what seven years of silence look like.

The red-brick landmark opened in 1931, and a brass plaque still fixed to its wall records the £10,000 given by the Miners’ Welfare Committee towards “the erection and equipment of this building” — a gift from the coalfield to the town’s education.

Inside, the explorers found the building’s grandest features intact: herringbone parquet corridors lined with oak panelling — the flooring in places lifted and stacked against the walls — and arched leaded windows throwing sunlight across empty stairwells.

At the building’s heart, a caged lift shaft rises through the main staircase — its trellis-gated lift still parked behind “do not use in the event of fire” signs that will never be needed again.

The campus’s last working occupants have left their signage behind: South Wales Police ran its Professional Development Unit (West) from the building in partnership with what was then Swansea Metropolitan University, training officers and staff.

Bilingual direction signs still point the way to the International Centre and the police unit — and one door bears the crest of UWTSD Wuhan Ligong College, the university’s 2016 partnership with its Chinese counterpart.

Elsewhere the rooms sit as their last users left them: a lecture theatre stripped back to its timber tiers, whiteboards still faintly marked, and a sports cupboard where the rackets and balls wait for a lesson that ended years ago.

The blue-and-white tiled showers — curtains still on their rails — survive from the building’s sporting decades.

Time has not been kind everywhere: ceilings have collapsed into a kitchen, training rooms sit heaped with broken furniture behind “DIM MYNEDIAD” signs, and damp is working at the plaster.

But the building’s next chapter has already begun on site: breeze-block walls and scaffold towers now stand across some corridors — early works linked to the plan unveiled in March to convert the landmark into luxury flats, brought forward by a former Swansea rugby international turned actor.

For the explorers, the visit was about the record: “Walking through today, old police signs, photographs and abandoned rooms offer a fascinating glimpse into its past,” the group said. “It’s amazing how much history still remains within these walls.”

The group describes its work as preserving Welsh history through photography — and its images of the Frankie & Benny’s frozen in time in Llanelli drew a wide audience earlier this year. Its cameras have also been inside the closed Stradey Park Hotel, found left powered-up with the beds still made. And the city’s explorers have previously revealed the hidden interior of the long-abandoned Elysium Theatre on High Street.

From miners’ pennies to luxury flats, the Technical College has tracked a century of the city’s fortunes — and for now, its corridors belong to the dust, the pigeons and the occasional camera.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

Former rugby international and movie actor to tackle iconic city building
The luxury flats plan for the Technical College.

LLANELLI: Menus still in the window, salt on the tables — inside the Frankie & Benny’s frozen in time since 2020
B&R Urban Explorers’ last look inside a time capsule.

LLANELLI: Stradey Park Hotel ‘left powered-up with beds made’ as urban explorers film inside closed landmark
Inside the hotel that never reopened.

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.

‘We need action. We need jobs. We need answers’ — Welsh student nurses face unemployment after 2,300 hours of unpaid training

Student nurses in Wales are facing the prospect of qualifying with no job to go to — just days after a similar crisis emerged for newly trained paramedics — after a key NHS recruitment process was delayed for the second time due to a critical shortage of available posts.

ITV News Wales first reported that the Royal College of Nursing Wales was raising the alarm over the shortage of Band 5 posts for newly qualified nurses, warning that up to 50% of nursing graduates across Wales may have no job at the end of their studies. Now the human face of that crisis has emerged from Carmarthen, where the S23 Adult Nursing cohort — 23 students — have written an open letter describing their situation as one of “deep desperation and disappointment.”

The students say they received an email on 7 April — the day before their planned streamlining date — informing them that the process had been pushed back from 8 April to 11 May 2026 due to a significantly low number of available Band 5 roles compared to graduating students. Even with the delay, they were told the gap was not expected to fully resolve. It is the second time the process has been delayed for this cohort.

“We were told that training as nurses would guarantee us employment, allowing us all to embark on a meaningful career that means so much to us,” the students wrote. “How have we been able to train for jobs that don’t exist?”

The Carmarthen cohort is part of a far wider picture, with the students estimating that around 400 nursing students across all pathways and universities in Wales are entering the process with little guarantee of employment.

The students describe the personal cost in stark terms. Over three years they have worked days, nights, weekends and holidays across NHS trusts in Wales, completing 2,300 hours of unpaid clinical placements — administering medication, performing CPR, dressing wounds, and supporting families through some of the most difficult moments of their lives. Their NHS bursary requires them to work within Wales for two years after qualifying.

“We have done all this, without salaries, driven by the belief in our NHS, our desire to serve our wider community, and our understanding that we, as nurses, are in high demand,” they wrote. “Now, as we are preparing to qualify, we have been informed that there may be no jobs available.”

One student, Trystan Thomas, spoke to ITV News about the impact on morale. “We were sold a dream about becoming nurses, about becoming healthcare professionals — and now we’ve been told ‘thanks for all your hard work, you may or may not get a job,’” he said. “I used to walk in and see smiles and we’d be happy about where we are. Now I see long faces, me included.”

Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW), which co-ordinates the national process of matching final-year nursing, midwifery and Operating Department Practitioner students to Band 5 roles across NHS Wales, confirmed the delay. “This decision has not been taken lightly,” a spokesperson said, adding that the extension was intended to allow health boards more time to review workforce positions and validate vacancies. HEIW acknowledged it could not guarantee the gap would fully resolve, and confirmed students would be released from the two-year Wales work obligation if posts could not be found.

Professor Sandy Harding, Associate Director of Nursing at RCN Wales, said the situation exposed serious failures in workforce planning. “Our NHS is under intense pressure, yet hundreds of newly qualified nurses may have no posts to enter. This is simply unacceptable,” she said. “These students stepped forward for Wales, trained through immense challenges, and now face uncertainty at the very moment the system needs them most.”

The crisis sits in uncomfortable contrast with the recent history of NHS nurse recruitment in the region. Swansea Bay University Health Board — which covers Morriston and Singleton hospitals — spent the last four years running a major international recruitment drive to fill the very Band 5 nursing vacancies that domestic graduates are now being told don’t exist. A recruitment trip to Kochi in India in 2023 attracted 107 nurses to Morriston Hospital, with the health board at that time employing approximately 32 international nurses every five weeks. In total, 456 overseas nurses were recruited over four years, with a 96% retention rate. Head of Nursing Education and Recruitment Lynne Jones said at the time: “Our sources of Band 5 nurses are our student nurses and the regular recruitment of overseas nurses.” The student nurses are now here — but it appears the posts are not.

The Welsh Government said it was working closely with health boards, HEIW and universities to address the situation. A Welsh Labour spokesperson said the number of nurses working in NHS Wales was now at record levels and that vacancy rates were falling — but acknowledged this improvement must translate into “clear and timely employment pathways for graduates.” The Welsh Conservatives called the situation “completely unacceptable” and pointed to the paramedic crisis as evidence of systemic workforce planning failure. The Welsh Liberal Democrats called it “an extraordinary and unforgivable failure.” Plaid Cymru said it highlighted Labour’s failure to invest in and plan for the NHS workforce. The Greens and Reform UK Wales also condemned the situation, with both noting the parallel with the paramedic recruitment collapse.

The nursing crisis follows Swansea Bay News’s revelation last week that nearly £10 million of public money had been spent training paramedics at Swansea University who were then told there were no NHS posts for them in Wales — with some advised to look as far away as Canada and Australia. Together, the two crises suggest a deepening pattern of NHS Wales workforce planning failures across multiple healthcare disciplines.

The Carmarthen students were clear about who they do and do not hold responsible. “We do not blame our university. They have been honest, transparent and supportive throughout our three years,” they wrote. Their three questions for those responsible were direct: why was there minimal transparency allowing them to seek roles elsewhere? Are they free to work outside Wales if posts are unavailable? And why is Wales continuing to accept increasing numbers of nursing students if this situation is likely to continue?

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

Nearly £10m of public money spent training paramedics who are now being told to look for work abroad
The crisis that broke just days before — newly qualified paramedics at Swansea University told there are no NHS jobs for them in Wales.

Welsh Government under pressure over paramedic recruitment shortfall
Last year’s warning that this pattern was emerging — when only 20 of 67 paramedic graduates were offered posts.

India recruitment trip attracts 100 nurses to Morriston Hospital
Swansea Bay ran a major international recruitment drive to fill the Band 5 vacancies that domestic graduates are now being told don’t exist.

Health board says Swansea Bay is the place to stay for overseas nurses
The 456 overseas nurses recruited over four years — and the 96% retention rate that made the health board an NHS Wales exemplar.

Former rugby international and movie actor to tackle iconic city building

Sililo Martens, a Tongan international who once graced the turf for both Swansea RFC and Bridgend RFC, is the man behind a proposal to breathe new life into the historic former Swansea Technical College in Mount Pleasant.

The Grade II listed building, a striking example of Tudor Gothic architecture that has watched over the city for more than a century, could be transformed into 18 one and two-bedroom apartments if the plans are given the green light.

Martens, who also had a role in the Clint Eastwood-directed movie Invictus and the Welsh soap opera Pobl y Cwm, has submitted an application for listed building consent to Swansea Council.

Documents lodged with the council reveal a vision to sympathetically restore the building, which has lain empty since the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) consolidated its city centre campuses.

The plans detail a meticulous refurbishment, including the installation of vintage lighting and Victorian-style coving, skirting boards, and doors to honour the building’s heritage.

A design and access statement submitted on behalf of Martens states: “The conversion will bring the property into beneficial use and utilise a high quality pallet of materials in its conversion.”

The statement also notes that the principle of converting the empty building into flats was deemed acceptable by planning officers during pre-application discussions.

The imposing red-brick structure, which first opened its doors in 1897, holds a special place in the hearts of many Swansea residents who studied there over the decades.

It stands adjacent to the former Swansea Grammar School for Boys, which was heavily damaged during the Second World War’s three-night blitz on the city.

A heritage impact assessment describes the technical college as “amongst the finest structures in Swansea”, praising how its design “cleverly responds to the topography on which it is built”.

The assessment adds: “The remaining historic fabric is still robust and despite substantial interior alterations of the late 20th Century, sufficient historic fabric remains to demonstrate the craftsmanship and exquisite detailing that contributed to this building.”

One of the most intriguing aspects of the proposed conversion is the plan to carefully dismantle a lecture theatre on the third floor, with its timber seats and panelling being repurposed and reused within the new apartments.

The proposal includes no new parking spaces, citing the site’s “excellent public transport” links and proximity to the city’s High Street railway station. Secure cycle storage will be provided in the basement.

Martens is no stranger to the Swansea business scene. In 2018, he opened ‘The Bookshop’, a popular bar and coffee shop in a former bookshop in the city’s trendy Uplands area.

This latest venture marks a significant step into property development for the former scrum-half, who also played for the Scarlets and Sale Sharks during a distinguished rugby career.

Swansea Council planners will now assess the listed building consent application before making a decision.

#foss4guk2023

Edrych ymlaen at #FOSS #4G yn
#DrindodDewiSant
#Abertawe, yn arbennig cyfraniad
#BannauBrycheiniog!

Looking forward to FOSS4G:UK Local 2023 at #UWTSD
's #Swansea campus, especially the newly-branded
Bannau Brycheiniog

#foss4guk2023

Edrych ymlaen at #FOSS #4G yn
#DrindodDewiSant
#Abertawe, yn arbennig cyfraniad
#BannauBrycheiniog!

Looking forward to FOSS4G:UK Local 2023 at #UWTSD
's #Swansea campus, especially the newly-branded
Bannau Brycheiniog

#foss4guk2023

Edrych ymlaen at #FOSS #4G yn
#DrindodDewiSant
#Abertawe, yn arbennig cyfraniad
#BannauBrycheiniog!

Looking forward to FOSS4G:UK Local 2023 at #UWTSD
's #Swansea campus, especially the newly-branded
Bannau Brycheiniog

#foss4guk2023

Edrych ymlaen at #FOSS #4G yn
#DrindodDewiSant
#Abertawe, yn arbennig cyfraniad
#BannauBrycheiniog!

Looking forward to FOSS4G:UK Local 2023 at #UWTSD
's #Swansea campus, especially the newly-branded
Bannau Brycheiniog

I've just moved to the shiny new archaeo.social server, so thought I should retoot an #introduction. After a couple days can I still be #newhere?

I'm a #phd student at #uwtsd mainly focussed on Near Eastern #archaeology (go #archaeodons!). My thesis is on the #ironage #ivory from #hasanlu in #iran. I also work in #devon as an #archaeologist and #archivist for #SWARCH.

I've just moved to the shiny new archaeo.social server, so thought I should retoot an #introduction. After a couple days can I still be #newhere?

I'm a #phd student at #uwtsd mainly focussed on Near Eastern #archaeology (go #archaeodons!). My thesis is on the #ironage #ivory from #hasanlu in #iran. I also work in #devon as an #archaeologist and #archivist for #SWARCH.

I've just moved to the shiny new archaeo.social server, so thought I should retoot an #introduction. After a couple days can I still be #newhere?

I'm a #phd student at #uwtsd mainly focussed on Near Eastern #archaeology (go #archaeodons!). My thesis is on the #ironage #ivory from #hasanlu in #iran. I also work in #devon as an #archaeologist and #archivist for #SWARCH.

I've just moved to the shiny new archaeo.social server, so thought I should retoot an #introduction. After a couple days can I still be #newhere?

I'm a #phd student at #uwtsd mainly focussed on Near Eastern #archaeology (go #archaeodons!). My thesis is on the #ironage #ivory from #hasanlu in #iran. I also work in #devon as an #archaeologist and #archivist for #SWARCH.

I've just moved to the shiny new archaeo.social server, so thought I should retoot an #introduction. After a couple days can I still be #newhere?

I'm a #phd student at #uwtsd mainly focussed on Near Eastern #archaeology (go #archaeodons!). My thesis is on the #ironage #ivory from #hasanlu in #iran. I also work in #devon as an #archaeologist and #archivist for #SWARCH.

Hi #mastodon! So, a mini #introduction. I’m a #phdstudent at the #uwtsd mainly focussed on Near Eastern #archaeology. Thesis is on the #ironage #ivory from #hasanlu in #iran. I also work in #Devon as an #achaeologist and #archivist for #SWARCH.

Hi #mastodon! So, a mini #introduction. I’m a #phdstudent at the #uwtsd mainly focussed on Near Eastern #archaeology. Thesis is on the #ironage #ivory from #hasanlu in #iran. I also work in #Devon as an #achaeologist and #archivist for #SWARCH.

Hi #mastodon! So, a mini #introduction. I’m a #phdstudent at the #uwtsd mainly focussed on Near Eastern #archaeology. Thesis is on the #ironage #ivory from #hasanlu in #iran. I also work in #Devon as an #achaeologist and #archivist for #SWARCH.