As we face a crisis on so many fronts – from the cost of living to the environment and war – we need media like voice.wales. We’ve shown what we can do on a shoestring, now we need your help to do far more.
Image: Kill the Bill protest in Cardiff, by Tom Davies
voice.wales was launched three years ago when in the depths of winter 2019, two journalists went to the Amazon warehouse in Swansea at 6am – to talk to workers about what really went on in the company’s so-called fulfilment centres.
They drove straight into the car park, got out and began approaching people as they were going in. Not surprisingly, none were up for talking and within minutes, security showed up and threw them off.
With little else to do, they decided to head to a place they had never been to before, chosen completely by random: Cymer in the Afan Valley.
There, in a small library they met a woman called Melanie, who told them everything about the community and how things had changed. She talked about saving the library from closure, how the local school was under threat and the effects of Tory austerity and the failure of Labour authorities to oppose it.
Melanie’s story, which painted a portrait of a place left behind after thirty years of neoliberal decline, became the first article on voice.wales.
In the three years since, we have never stopped seeking out stories in this way. It’s often how the most important issues get heard.
But we’ve also turned to investigations, news and analysis. This has seen us expose politicians from both the far right and the extreme centre and investigate Welsh Government and local councils.
We’ve taken issues and given them a platform when they otherwise could have gone completely ignored.
In 2020, we broke the story of poverty within the Taxi trade in Cardiff, after drivers had been left out of government support. When they decided to demonstrate with their union outside Welsh Government offices, we were there too.
In 2021, we highlighted the practice of South Wales Police retrospectively targeting Black Lives Matter protesters – some as young as 15 – just because they had said an offensive word or shone a torch at some cops.
We’ve interviewed NHS workers campaigning for a pay strike, high school students protesting for Palestine, domestic violence workers being paid unfairly, victims of forced labour, families in poverty, asylum seekers unionising against state racism, and many more.
Only recently, we exposed the culture of low-pay and overwork within the Cardiff domestic violence workforce, after lengthy interviews with workers.
At the end of last year, we took on our first in-depth undercover investigation, with one of our reporters going into Amazon to work as a courier for six weeks and revealing the shocking conditions we found inside.
What the money will go to
So far, all this has been done without having any paid staff, and everything has been done with the smallest team of four volunteers, working in their spare time in and out of jobs.
We’re now getting more issues coming through and people wanting to share their stories with us or write for us.
This is fantastic, but unless we can get on a more stable footing, it’s hard to see how we can carry on long term, let alone cover more.
On the flipside, if we can raise enough money, we’ll not only continue, we’ll completely change what we can do and how much we can cover. It will mean we can operate on a completely different scale and truly expand.
We have secured some small, cheap office space with a Cardiff based charity helping the deaf community. As part of this, an apprentice from the deaf community will be joining us for one day a week and become part of the team. This position will be paid by the charity, as part of their overall apprenticeship with them.
So your money will go towards paying for the office space until the end of 2022, but most crucially, towards paying two journalists to work for three days a week on voice.wales.
We will also be able to expand the number of contributors writing both comment and journalism for us. It really will be game changing.
In addition to this, we are also launching a groundbreaking journalism scheme with the Butetown Community Centre, aimed at Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic writers, editors and media creators from Butetown and the surrounding area who have a passion for writing, reporting and journalism.
Why now
With the situation facing us right now – a cost of living crisis, climate crisis, imperialist warfare, authoritarian attacks on the right to protest and asylum seekers facing intolerable levels of state racism, to name a few things – voice.wales can play a critical role.
This is especially the case when we have a situation where people are so poor they can’t even afford to eat or heat their homes, whilst at the same time the profits of energy firms balloon. It was the same when low paid workers were told they couldn’t get a pay rise after risking their lives during the pandemic, only to watch the wealth of billionaires soar.
It’s important that in journalism we don’t lose sight of these basic truths. Pretending that the existence of extreme poverty alongside the existence of obscene wealth is just part of the natural order of things, instead of a deliberate result of gross class inequality, is not upholding impartial values – it’s negligence.
Having media that understands this, and is dedicated to original journalism, news and investigations, is crucial. We’ve proved what we can do, now we need your help to do even more.
Support our fundraiser now.
