You can also contact us by clicking here.He Abertillery Valleys and Ebbw Valleys Dynamic Launched in 2015. The idea for the fortnightly paper was born when two local men met and talked in a library on a quiet afternoon. They were both men of letters: Flatman had written reports on economic subjects, “the Channel tunnel The following are some examples of how to get started: so on”, and Meek was a poet and one-time mayor of the town, with a bit of a newspaper background, having once worked as an editor’s assistant on regional papers. “I was very much in the old-school journalist tradition,” he says, “start at the bottom and end up at the bottom.” Chatting, they bemoaned the absence of any news coverage of the town – the Cardiff and Newport papers had long since given up offices in this corner of the valleys – and they thought there might be a niche for a paper that told heartfelt local stories with a bit of a smile on its face. “In London terms,” Flatman says, “we thought somewhere between the Guardian and Private Eye.”
You can also find out more about the following: Dynamic In the midst of the digital revolution, print media was launched. Meek learned basic layout skills. However, he was told by the printers that he had crossed the margins a few times. Flatman refused to embrace technology. “I would write longhand,” he says, “and read it out to Julian who would type it up.” They were helped, they think, by the fact that Flatman was an early riser and Meek worked late nights. In this sense, the Dynamic They never slept. They split up the roles. Meek was in charge of editorial direction and news and humour and production; Flatman took on business and sport and “the commercial side”. The At its peak, the Dynamic was shifting 5,000 free copies, though distribution was problematic: “The streets are very narrow here, you stop for five seconds and there’s a big jam,” Meek says. “I had a van, but I’m not agile.” Financing, which originally came from Flatman’s savings, was also a challenge. “The consensus was, we were a great cultural success,” Meek says, “but a total financial disaster.”
Sebastián Bruno, a young Argentinian-Spanish photographer who was living in Abertillery with his girlfriend after studying in Newport, picked up a copy of the Dynamic On a pub table, 2015. He enjoyed the regular features so much – the page 3 Sheep of the Week, the no-holds-barred pub reviews – that he put himself forward as staff photographer (unpaid). He documented the Dynamic’s passage through the turbulent Brexit years – Ebbw Vale and Abertillery were among the biggest leave areas in Britain, though the paper followed a firm remain line – and made a BBC film about the duo’s efforts to keep the paper afloat. This week, a book and exhibition of Bruno’s photographs of the Dynamic will be launched at Martin Parr’s gallery in Bristol. The event will feature a choir from Abertillery.
Meek and Flatman are rueful about the paper’s demise – under mounting costs it ceased printing in 2017 and bold plans for a relaunch were scuppered by Covid. The criticism the paper received makes them a little tense. “Most people really enjoyed it,” Flatman says, “but a few people said we used too many long words.” Meek is unapologetic. “We employed old-fashioned school-book English,” he says. “I don’t see why something shouldn’t be grammatical, and make sense, and not be readable by anyone.”
Some scoops are noteworthy. One time, a group of local schoolchildren on a trip to the US were briefly held hostage in an American hostage situation. Meek, who was putting his paper to bed at 9.50pm and hoping to make the last bus to home, received the news. “There was no choice really,” he says. He made the calls from his office landline to the States and changed the front page. The majority of the news, however, was not as dramatic. It was more about the ups-and-downs of the community. Dynamic A touch of satire is added to the story. Meek believes that the outside world often reports on the lives of Abertillery residents in terms of crime and deprivation. “The great thing about the Dynamic was that it could report on the mundane, reflect it back in a way we could delight in, or sometimes suffer along with,” Flatman says. Meek also agrees. “You need something where people can sense bit of generosity towards their own lives… rather than have another theory fired into their head from the internet.” The Dynamic remains at rest for the present, but its proprietors haven’t yet given up hope of a return by popular demand.