16 October 2015

S4C's children's character Cyw took part in celebrations in Carmarthen as the new Welsh language centre Yr Atom was officially opened by First Minister Carwyn Jones, on Thursday 15 October.

S4C is proud to have worked with the Yr Atom team to decorate a special children's area with pictures of Cyw and friends, the popular programmes for children aged 3-7.

Garffild Lloyd Lewis, S4C's Director of Projects and Relocation, says; "We are very pleased to collaborate with the team at Yr Atom in Carmarthen to include Cyw and friends as part of this new centre. We are delighted that Cyw will play a role in the centre's work to promote the Welsh language and culture among the youngest members of the community and their parents too, and we hope that we can expand to include other centres in the future.

"S4C, as the only Welsh language TV channel in the world, plays a vital role in supporting and promoting the Welsh language. Services such as Cyw are invaluable to introduce Welsh in a way that appeals to young children, to learn the language from a young age, and to encourage parents to use the language as well. S4C's huge contribution to the language must be considered as part of the discussions about the channel's future funding, in order to secure the programmes and the work reaching out to communities."

Gwydion Wynne, Director of Yr Atom centre said; "At Yr Atom we take pride in our partnership with S4C and are extremely proud that the channel has sponsored the wall in the children's room. The reaction of our youngest visitors as they see the images of Cyw and friends on the wall is priceless. We look forward to working with the channel during the next three years as Yr Atom prepares for S4C's move to their new headquarters in Carmarthen in 2018. It's an extremely exciting time."

S4C supports Welsh learners in many ways every day. Primarily, the tailored Welsh learners' service Dal Ati offers special programmes, as well as a website full of useful resources and the Dal Ati app to practice the language anywhere!

Recently the Dal Ati app introduced a new tool which provides a live vocabulary feed whilst watching the gripping detective drama Y Gwyll/Hinterland. In the same way, the @TifiaCyw service offers vocabulary to help non-Welsh speaking parents to watch Cyw programmes with their children. Information about programmes, resources and the Dal Ati app are available on the website s4c.cymru/dalati

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