Institute of Welsh Affairs

This is a recording of the launch of our report Beyond Social Partnership? Devolved Levers to Support Trade Unions in Wales , which took place on Thursday 16 February 2023. This event was chaired by the IWA's Policy and External Affairs Manager Joe Rossiter and included a presentation and Q&A delivered by Harry Thompson, the IWA's Economic Policy Lead and author of the report. As part of our w...

In the IWA's report Fiscal Firepower and Effective Policy Making in Wales , our Economic Policy Lead Harry Thompson argues that reforming the Welsh Government’s borrowing powers is a key option to better enable transformative policy making in Wales. In this podcast, you can hear Harry in conversation with Rebecca Evans MS, Minister for Finance and Local Government, and Llyr Gruffydd MS, about the...

A new Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative & Unionist Party will be announced on 5th September 2022. The new government formed will take over the promises made in the 2019 Conservative Manifesto around levelling up and regional funding post-Brexit. These include the nascent UK Shared Prosperity Fund and the future of the Levelling Up Fund, as part of the wider levelling up agenda. In...

In this conversation recorded after our event with the Swiss Embassy, Auriol Miller, Co-Chair of the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales Laura McAllister, and Swiss Ambassador to the UK Markus Leitner have an in-depth conversation about Swiss Federalism and what we can learn from it in Wales. Our event, The Swiss decentralisation experience & Wales’ constitutional pers...

This was the first of a series of joint events planned as part of the IWA's partnership with Bangor University . The North Welsh population is shifting dramatically. This is not only due to the ageing experienced by other developed nations, but local factors including inward migration of retirees from across the UK and working age people leaving the area. In the two decades leading up to 2018, the...

This event was dedicated to the launch of our latest report, Our Land: Communities and Land Use . The project is funded by the Friends Provident Charitable Foundation and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. Our report tells a story of Wales severely lagging behind in giving communities a right to access land and other assets, with an arduous and demoralising process that seems almost designed to keep...

On the 30th of November and 1st of December 2021, the IWA held a two-day summit on the future of the Welsh economy. In this episode, our policy team, Will Henson, Harry Thompson, and Dr Jack Watkins, look back on the event and discuss some of its key moments. The first section looks at our Q&As with Vaughan Gething MS, Minister for Economy in the Welsh Government, and Neil O’Brien MP, Parliame...

Co-written with Welsh consultancy firm The Means, this report draws on original research and the Understanding Welsh Places online tool to explore how Welsh places responded to Covid-19. We use stories from communities across Wales to understand how residents used local facilities and assets during the crisis, and what we learned about Welsh places’ preparedness to respond to an event of this scal...

At this free online event, attendees heard about our latest report, part of our project on the Foundational Economy, funded by CREW. Produced in collaboration with The Means, a consultancy working on economic regeneration across the UK, our report outlines how regulations and their enforcement can disproportionately impact small and medium sized businesses, making it hard for new firms to enter es...

This event discusses the surge in volunteering during the Covid-19 pandemic, and explores the challenges the sector has faced as well as whether there has been a shift in policy over the past 15 months. Since the pandemic began in March 2020, interest in volunteering in Wales has seen a significant increase. It has played a crucial role in supporting communities and helping people meet their basic...

This event, jointly organised by the Media Reform Coalition and the Institute of Welsh Affairs, is part of ‘The BBC and Beyond’, an MRC campaign which aims to reimagine public media for the digital age. The event focusses on what a reformed public service media landscape within Wales could look like. The BBC has set out its strategic goal to recreate itself as a ‘truly UK wide organisation (…) dec...

This event discusses changes to how communities in Wales are using banking services, and explores the possibilities of more community-oriented models. One of the most dramatic changes to Welsh high streets in the last decade has been the decline of banking, with the closure of just over 40% of bank branches leaving customers and businesses struggling to manage their cash. In this edition of our Re...

“If you can’t afford a bike, having the freedom to go cycling doesn’t mean anything.” This event discusses access to sport for Welsh communities and how the pandemic has exacerbated inequalities. Whilst elite sport has been able to continue fairly uninterrupted since the first wave, we examine the public’s access to sport and exercise, and explore how inequalities have manifested themselves. We ex...

The Welsh Places Charter has been created by the Welsh Places Influencing Group, convened by the IWA. We are a coalition of organisations, practitioners, and academics passionate about creating a Wales in which people’s social, economic, environmental and cultural wellbeing is at the centre of our communities. It is clear that the way in which we live and work will not be the same as we emerge fro...

Our panel look back at the 2021 Senedd election and assess what the outcome means for the future of Wales. We look at the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic on the results, the impact of young people being given the right to vote for the first time and whether the electoral landscape of Wales has shifted in the wake of the results. Our panel discusses the election campaigns and share their opin...

In December, Professor Gerry Holtham stepped down as an IWA Trustee after nearly twenty years and in this event one of the evergreens of Welsh public life seeks to balance the inter-generational books. Wales has the highest median age in the UK and in 20 years 1 in 4 of the population will be over 65. This figure reflects the fact that educated, young people are leaving in their tens of thousands...

Our panel of transport experts and local leaders discussed how to create a region-wide travel network that works for everybody who lives and works in the capital. Is it time for Cardiff to have a congestion charge? What are the politics of big changes to the transport system? The panel explore the challenges and opportunities for transport in the Cardiff City Region as we move from the Covid-19 cr...

During this panel discussion we hear from people with a learning disability about their experiences during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, specifically in regards to relationships and connections. Mencap Cymru have been collecting oral histories which show how important friendships and relationships are for people, often supporting our identity and validation of our worth. However, there remain sig...

This report presents an analysis of policy and practice in business support in Wales and its impacts on the Welsh economy. We argue that business support needs to be reoriented to be more accessible to firms in the foundational economy, and that doing so will have both economic and social benefits. This launch event will include a presentation of our findings and recommendations, along with an opp...

To understand the ongoing impact of the pandemic on individuals, work, the community and the world around us, we need to listen to people’s experiences. That is why the Institute of Welsh Affairs and the Wales Co-operative Centre, alongside 8 other partner organisations, launched a new initiative to gather these stories using the online storytelling tool Sensemaker®. This event launches a second r...

The topic of this discussion is proposed changes to GCSEs and qualifications for 16 year olds as part of the ongoing reform of the curriculum.  How can assessment remain robust whilst supporting the curriculum’s radical vision? How can the new curriculum balance freedom for teachers with public expectations about content, including on Welsh history and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic history? We...

This Rethinking Wales is led by the Bevan Commission and will explore health and care challenges in vulnerable communities and the mental health impacts of Covid-19. The event will also look at the wider picture, outside of the NHS itself, that is having a big impact on population health and wellbeing including; unemployment, poverty, inequality, social care and mental health. Panellists: Dame Sue...

The IWA Cardiff Media Summit 2021 is a series of four events focusing on the new landscape for media in Wales. O Ebrill 2022 ymlaen bydd y cyfan o arian cyhoeddus S4C yn dod o ffi’r drwydded. Gyda’r broses o drafod setliad ariannu S4C o 2022 hyd 2027 wedi cychwyn, y newyddiadurwr Guto Harri sy’n holi Owen Evans, Prif Weithredwr S4C. Dyma gyfle i glywed gan Brif Weithredwr S4C sut bydd y sianel yn...

The IWA Cardiff Media Summit 2021 is a series of four events focusing on the new landscape for media in Wales. This event uses a simultaneous translator to translate from Welsh into English. From April 2022 all of S4C’s public funding will come from the licence fee. With the discussion over the funding settlement for 2022 to 2027 underway, journalist Guto Harri interviews S4C Chief Executive, Owen...

The IWA Cardiff Media Summit 2021 was a series of four events focusing on the new landscape for media in Wales. This, the third event in the series, will focus on news in Wales. Traditional news organisations are finding new ways to deliver content in the face of diminishing revenues and increased competition from online providers. At the same time they are increasingly coming under attack from po...