Observations following correspondence between the Chair of the Petitions Committee and the Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism
1. We ask that the Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism, the Minister with responsibility for Education, the Minister with responsibility for Natural Resources and Planning, and the First Minister, who has responsibility for the Welsh language, give consideration to the aims of the petition. To achieve our petition’s aims, listed below, co-operation between each of the departments named above is essential.
2. Stimulate respect and interest in the Welsh language and to secure and increase the use of it and its growth.The richness of our place names needs to be celebrated by bringing our cultural heritage to life for everyone. With the aid of the latest technology, which advances daily, everybody can become acquainted with the richness of the Welsh language via the names in our landscape. This could attract Welsh speakers, those who have an interest in the language, and those are learning it. It is also an opportunity to go a step further by introducing contemporary Welsh-language culture to a wider audience.
3. Increase the sense of identity among local communities by sharing the wealth of our cultural heritage with others.Organisations in the statutory, public and voluntary sectors need to conserve and take pride in the unseen aspects of our cultural heritage as well as the visible ones. Doing so would introduce an interesting element of diversity to the environmental perspective of local people and visitors.
4. Engage the interest and awareness of visitors of the richness of our local heritage and thereby bring educational and economic benefits to areas. School-based education should ensure that children and young people have an opportunity to appreciate the richness of Welsh place names as a part of their heritage, and this can be achieved by educating them in the history, geography, mythology and historical use of our nation’s land.
We also believe that place names, and their associated heritage and history, should be an integral part of environmental studies courses in further education and higher education, and an integral part of outdoor pursuits courses run by other bodies. Similarly, work should be done with outdoor centres in order to raise their awareness of the richness of traditional, indigenous place names, and in order to support their use of Welsh place names in their day-to-day work.
We ask that National Assembly emphasise the importance of all this to the appropriate ministers in the Welsh Government, so that they can persuade local authorities, Natural Resources Wales, the National trust, and National Park Authorities, along with other organisations in the statutory, public, voluntary and private sectors to take these appropriate and far-reaching steps to safeguard and celebrate our national heritage through the medium of Welsh place names in our landscape.